Aw man. Remember when 38 Studios closed down and then most of their staff were picked up by Epic Games to form an ‘Impossible Studio’? It seemed like the end of a painful saga for the Big Huge Games team. Well, unfortunately their troubles aren’t over yet. The entire team has just been fired all over again. Epic founder Tim Sweeney had this to say:

“We’re closing Impossible Studios. When former members of Big Huge Games approached Epic last year, we saw the opportunity to help a great group of people while putting them to work on a project that needed a team. It was a bold initiative and the Impossible folks made a gallant effort, but ultimately it wasn’t working out for Epic.”

“In addition to providing Impossible Studios employees with 3 months of severance pay, we’ll be giving the team the opportunity to form a new company with the Impossible Studios name and the awesome Impossibear logo. This means that Infinity Blade: Dungeons is now on hold as we figure out the future of the project.”

Apparently Ken Levine of Irrational Studios has shown interest in recruiting some of the Impossible staff, linking to the Irrational hiring page on Facebook and saying that he is “a huge fan of everything Big Huge ever did.”

Source: Eurogamer

When 38 Studios were shut down, many gamers looking for a new and interesting MMO experience were devastated at seeing parts of the game that we would never play. Never play for free. “There’s a lot more I’d like to tell you about the game, such as how our fully planned four-year story arc was driven by player participation,” Steve Danuser has said on his personal blog.

“How the theme of choice and consequence permeated our systems, content, and world design. How the choices players made during our chapter-based story arc would cause permanent and lasting changes to each server–changes that could be different from other servers.”

It sounds wonderful — but if you’re not convinced, check out his latest reveal, a fly-through of the game’s beautiful world. Embedding’s been disabled, so click here to watch it on YouTube instead. *cries*

Source: Massively

In an interview with Boston Magazine, 38 Studios founder and former pro-baseball player Curt Schilling has spilled a few details regarding Project Copernicus. The Kingdoms of Amalur MMORPG was in the works for several years before 38 Studios and Big Huge Games went bankrupt in June, and Schilling revealed the developer intended to surprise the industry by taking the freemium route.

“We were going to be the first triple-A, hundred-million-dollar-plus, free-to-play, micro-transaction-based MMO. That was one of our big secrets. I think when we eventually showed off the game for the first time, the atom bomb was going to be free-to-play. When we announced that at the end, that was gonna be the thing that, I think, shocked the world,” he said. Schilling added that he initially had doubts about the F2P model but “went 180 degrees”, and that investors had become very wary of subscription-based games.

The Kingdoms of Amalur IP and all associated assets were awarded to its debitors, the state of Rhode Island, and will be sold on, potentially enabling another publisher to complete and release Project Copernicus.

Source: Boston Magazine

Although the alternative is the State of Rhode Island creating its own video game from the Amalur or Copernicus IP’s, which doesn’t seem likely. Yes, Rhode Island – trustees in the bankruptcy scandal that brought 38 Studios and Big Huge Games crashing down, have just been awarded the rights to the intellectual property (and physical property, including chairs and tables) from the companies to whom they loaned $75 million. Presumably, Rhode Island will now attempt to sell the IP to recover some of the money they invested, which could very well mean EA picking it up again – or perhaps a different company entirely.

Source: VG247

After a prolonged series of death throes, Kingdoms of Amalur developers 38 Studios have declared bankruptcy. State and federal authorities are now said to be launching an investigation into the company’s finances and its decline, including $8.5m worth of loans “based on state film tax credits that had not yet been issued”. The Rhode Island Governor has vowed to get every “penny, nickle and dime” possible back for the taxpayers.

Source: Massively. Thanks to Bradley Cecchin