38 studios Auction Nov 14th and 15th.

Mughal_sl said:

The only thing that could be done was to acquire the art assets for pennies on the dollar and reuse them for another game (or build the same game on top of another). And even that could only be done by the people who built that system as there was no documentation.

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From what I hear, Rhode Island is still asking for 10 million for the IP/assets and royalties off anything that is made with it. Basically it will never sell until they come back to reality on what they have.

Utnayan_sl said:

The government in the video games business would be hilarious. And stupid. Which it was when they originally backed the deal with tax payer dollars and fell for it, without knowing the industry, AT ALL. Not to mention a lot of the scumbag schiesters that work in it.

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Is Rhode Island cutting a deal with 38 Studios to move their headquarters to their state fundamentally any different than Alabama cutting a deal with Mercedes to build a manufacturing plant in that state? States cut deals like that all the time to entice businesses to come to their state. In RI's case, they are ranked dead last in the country when it comes economic health so they were desperate to try anything to stimulate job growth.

The difference here is that Lincoln Chaffee is a Grade A prick who had a personal dislike of Schilling before he ever got elected as governor. The fate of Copernicus was decided the day he got elected. If anyone else but Chaffee had been elected governor, Copernicus would be released by now and the topic of discussion would be complaining how bad Copernicus sucked because it wasn't an open world sandbox game like EQ1.

Rescorla_sl said:

Is Rhode Island cutting a deal with 38 Studios to move their headquarters to their state fundamentally any different than Alabama cutting a deal with Mercedes to build a manufacturing plant in that state? States cut deals like that all the time to entice businesses to come to their state. In RI's case, they are ranked dead last in the country when it comes economic health so they were desperate to try anything to stimulate job growth.

The difference here is that Lincoln Chaffee is a Grade A prick who had a personal dislike of Schilling before he ever got elected as governor. The fate of Copernicus was decided the day he got elected. If anyone else but Chaffee had been elected governor, Copernicus would be released by now and the topic of discussion would be complaining how bad Copernicus sucked because it wasn't an open world sandbox game like EQ1.

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There is a huge difference. Mercedes is a known company that has a track record of producing goods. There is no gamble when cutting a deal with Mercedes or any other known company. Cutting a deal with a fucking video game company which are well known to go bust especially a new one with no history is real retarded sir. If they did any homework at all they would have seen the history of failed MMO's and stayed far the fuck away from them.

RI should have consulted us.

Abefroman_sl said:

There is a huge difference. Mercedes is a known company that has a track record of producing goods. There is no gamble when cutting a deal with Mercedes or any other known company. Cutting a deal with a fucking video game company which are well known to go bust especially a new one with no history is real retarded sir. If they did any homework at all they would have seen the history of failed MMO's and stayed far the fuck away from them.

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I'm not talking about risk at all. Of course investing in a game company is more risky than a proven manufacturer like Mercedes That is besides the point. The state of Rhode Island was and still is in desperate straits economically. I wasn't kidding when I said they are ranked dead last in the country. They decided to play the role of venture capitalist using tax payer dollars in order to bring 38 Studios to RI.

Anyone who has ever invested knows your investments don't always return a capital gain right off the bat. Sometimes the return on investment takes several years to occur. The RI deal with 38Studios was a long term deal. The goal of the RI state government was that if the venture with 38 Studios turned out to be successful, they would be able to attract other high tech businesses to relocate there.

All of those millions of taxpayer dollars were not going to waste. Pretty much all of that money was going directly right back into the RI economy because 38 Studio employees were buying or renting a place to live, buying groceries, gas, goods etc. In other words Keynsian Economics 101.

A non-dickhead politican would have put aside his personal dislike of Schiling and continued the deal knowing that killing the deal would screw over all the 38 Studios employees who moved to RI.

I've heard VC (so I'd assume states as well) are extremely, extremely reluctant to throw money at video games these days which is why so many have to go begging on Kickstarter. For the most part if your tagline is "We're making this game" the VC just stops listening from that point. They're all more interested in funding products which are sold to businesses if they're funding software. Too many have been burned by mismanaged and never-profit video games.

I have several friends who worked there. They up and left Rhode Island the second they got let go. All of them had wives and kids who also left the state with them. Seems like a bum deal for the Rhode Island economy to have everyone who worked there hating the state and flocking away.

You have to keep in mind, though, that the State would have had to kick in tens of millions more dollars, if not over a hundred million, to get the game out the door. With no guarantee that it wouldn't just be dead on arrival. So instead of pissing away 30 or 40 million (I don't remember exactly how much of the overall 75 million was released), the state would be in for double that or more. Still with very little chance that 38 Studios would continue to operate after. Maybe there was some personal animosity between the new governor and Schilling, but the fact is that the state made a massive mistake doing the loan in the first place. Shoveling in even more money would have just meant they pissed away that much more, in all likelihood.

heh, I forgot that the loan agreement also called for an absolutely ridiculous amount of growth on 38 Studio's end of things. They were required to have approximately 450 employees by the end of 2012, according to the loan agreement. That's a labor cost of somewhere around 30-40 million, PER YEAR, at the least. Where the fuck did Schilling and the rest of his executive team think they were going to fund that from, when the RI loan was only 75 million in total, and was actually substantially less than that due to a bunch of fees and payments required?

Eomer_sl said:

They were required to have approximately 450 employees by the end of 2012, according to the loan agreement. That's a labor cost of somewhere around 30-40 million, PER YEAR, at the least.

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Yeah this is basically what fucked them the most. They had to hire a Blizzard sized team but didn't have a game out with that sweet Blizzard sized sub revenue to support it. Maybe they would have been sustainable and capable of pushing out tons of content if their team had enough time and money to get the game out.

Good lord.

I shudder to think of the moment that the words "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it" came out of someone's (Curt's, probably) mouth.

38S almost signed a deal for Kingdoms of Amalur 2, that was supposed to be Curt's last hope.

There was also some bullshit about tax credits they were trying to sell to someone else that got scuppered by the state calling the loan. But ultimately, they needed to come up with something like 50-100 million just to finish and release the game, in all likelihood. It's fucking loonie tunes.

He's a loopy loo on facebook...so predictable.

Gives me a chuckle everyday.

Says the republican who took state handouts to fund the business he drive into the ground. LoL. Not that hilldawg any better.