Quote (proj3ct_chaos @ May 26 2012 04:47pm)
I highly doubt it's true since the media these days. Someone posted this on the forums a little bit ago and has friends that were working inside the studio.
To Those Pissed at 38S & Curt Schilling
I'm really sorry you guys have been having issues with bugs and waiting patiently for patches to come etc. I wanted to clarify some things since I've been following this closing down issue for about a month now, and I have friends who work inside the studio who have lost their jobs. First of all I don't know why Curt is not talking or has not made a statement yet about anything publicly yet, but I'm sure when he can he will.
While I don't have all the answers I'd like to try and clarify some really bad rumors going around the internet. First of all, Rhode Island never gave 38S $75M of tax payer money. The 75M was from a private investor and Rhode Island basically co signed the loan. No money from Rhode Island has been touched. To date 38S has received about 50M of the 75M promised to them for moving to RI. The money was a gift to them, Curt didn't do anything wrong by taking it. I don't know a single person who's trying to start a business and if someone said here's some money come move here and set up shop who wouldn't do it. The 25M left is still in holding and would cover the costs 38 needed to pay through 2014. Curt also put in all his money up front for the first 2 years and when he bought BHG. EA also gave him some money to help produce Reckoning. I don't know the total amount, but the rumor is 50M
From my friends who worked inside, some told me the reason they missed the payment was 38S & BHG have not yet received any money from the sales of Reckoning from EA or Steam. Also they were promised $8M from the government for film tax credits when they paid the 1M fee. They never received a penny. Not a single person I know of who worked there blamed Curt or the management. Everyone loved their jobs, and they are angry at the Governor who basically screwed them all over by disclosing confidential information and scarred off investors. They only were seeking a small assistance to cover the needed funds to cover the studio until the royalty fees came in and their new investors payments would start in about 1-2 months. The state of RI totally cut them off with 0 help even though the governor said he wanted to help them. in addition he blatantly lied about certain things about the game such as it needed a minimum of 3M units to sell to break even. My sources say that's a fat lie and it wasn't even close to that #.
Ian already spoke about the Patch for Reckoning on his goodbye post so I won't rehash that. The MMO was pretty far into development. It was fully playable, but unfinished. The fly through video was pretty old, but the team internally wanted to put something out and begged management to release something for fans, and that video was something that was just laying around they could put up quickly.
There is still hope and a small window of time the game can be saved and most of the team could come back. Curt is being Black Balled as it's sometimes called, and I don't know exactly why, but I suspect this franchise gets sold to SOE for dirt cheap in another month, or possibly EA. This whole thing was about greedy people seeing something great and wanting it for themselves. There's no reason a game that sold 1.2M units in 90 days should not have the funds to pay it's employees. There was still some $50M in promised funds awaiting them, it just hadn't come yet. I think that was on purpose. I think that about sums up what I wanted to say. I hope you guys will learn one thing from all this, whether it's related to this company or the media in general. They lie, there are political leaders and agency's out there who have an agenda and they will do whatever they can to smear someone's reputation, no matter how good a person they are, or the history of things they have done. Anyone who knew Curt Schilling and has seen how much he and his family have given to their community's helped in hospitals, and listening to the 400 people who worked for him all will tell you he was one of the greatest people they knew. Many of those people still stayed and worked for free the last few weeks after they were unable to receive their paycheck because they loved their job, and they respected him.
Moving forward what can we expect. Well the game and intellectual property will go to the state of RI if Curt is unable to find private investors in the next few weeks. The worst case scenario out of this is Reckoning gets sold as assets to another company, if there is any money left over after paying the remaining balance that RI needs to pay it will go back to 38 Studios. Another company could come in and purchase the license and finish making the game and it could be put out by SOE or something like that. The best case would be the needed funding comes in soon and Curt can reassemble most of the team and they get to finish the MMO and other project they were working on. They were literally like 2 weeks ago from closing on 2 new publishers for the game when they were let go. (Thanks Governor D bag.)
Hope that clears some confusion up. I'm not sure how much more I'll be coming on here. I'm moving myself in a week or two and won't have internet so I just wanted to leave that for anyone else who may come upon this before the site gets closed down. I pray the next time I come back it'll be under much happier circumstances. Final words of Wisdom from Will Smith in the Pursuit of Happiness: Don't ever let somebody tell you... You can't do something. Not even me. All right?
You got a dream... You gotta protect it. People can't do somethin' themselves, they wanna tell you you can't do it. If you want somethin', go get it. Period.