38 studios Auction Nov 14th and 15th.

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Skinner

Skinner

Trakanon Raider
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People forget or simply don't know that Massachusetts at this time under Gov. Patrick (D) was ramping up their technology/media/film sectors, hoping to be the biggest player in the country by literally offering the best possible deals in the US at the cost of Mass taxpayers despite massively burdening the tax payer short term and widely seen as unpopular. Many game and entertainment studios settled in Massachusetts during this time for this reason, and Curt was one of them. It was some time after this that RI, feeling the heat of unemployment ( 15% ) and wanting a cut of MAs action as RI suffered, poached Curt and his company from Massachusetts by offering Curt a 100% complete bullshit deal that everyone knew was bullshit except the gullible politicians of RI currently in office. When this happened the Massachusetts Gov. actually came out and gave a bizarre press conference basically saying there is absolutely zero way Massachusetts could even come close to this deal and the incentives RI was offering to Curt were crazy and unrealistic. I wish I had a video of that press conference because the way Patrick framed things and his word choice made it very obvious that the deal RI made Curt was too good to be true and MA didn't want to be anywhere near it, but neither Curt nor RI cared because each believed they would be getting something they wanted: better rates for Curt to build his dream and employment/business ventures for RI (Article 1 / Article 2).

We know what happened next. Curts first game, while popular, wasn't the massive grand slam he and RI hoped it to be, Curts company was mismanaged due to inexperience and taking on too much too soon, and like many MMOs the development cost began to grow out of control as they continuously lagged behind production. 38 studios runs out of cash, bounces a check when trying to pay back the loan and the following week while unable to make payroll, goes bankrupt. RI tries to save face by attempting to pin all the blame on 38 studios when it was them who gave a ridiculous deal and loan doomed to fail from the start to an unproven in an attempt to compete with MA and shave down unemployment heading into an election year. Curt himself actually loses his entire fortune from baseball as a result and the SEC charged Rhode Island Commerce and Wells Fargo with security fraud because both RI and Wells Fargo knew everything was bullshit surrounding the loan and knew Curt was an unproven commodity from the start who should have never received the loan he was given in the first place. RI then goes after 38 studios to try to recoup anything they can get from this disaster. No charges are filed against 38 studios.


No idea where this bullshit of curt being involved in embezzlement regarding 38 studios came from.
 
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Fucker

Fucker

Log Wizard
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Also need to mention 38S not paying the mortgages of employee's houses they agreed to buy. Oh what fun it must have been to lose your house and have your credit ruined. CS should have been hanged for that alone.
 
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Fucker

Fucker

Log Wizard
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Lunis said:
Curt has a personality disorder, just read his tweets. He has to be 'right' about everything just like my 6 year old niece.
Click to expand...

He's a giant man child with the maturity level of an infant.
 
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Skinner

Skinner

Trakanon Raider
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Fucker said:
Also need to mention 38S not paying the mortgages of employee's houses they agreed to buy. Oh what fun it must have been to lose your house and have your credit ruined. CS should have been hanged for that alone.
Click to expand...

From what I understand 38S purchased the homes (30+) and then partnered/sold them to another RI company called MoveTrek, who was then responsible for working with the home owners and putting them on the market and selling them while 38S was on the hook for paying fees until then. MoveTrek sold all but 7 (which they claimed they couldn't sell because of the sluggish housing market at the time) and then when 38S went bankrupt MoveTrek promptly canceled their contract with 38S and billed the employees instead. The last thing I could find was that the 7 homeowners contacted the MA AG and were threatening to sue/investigate/bring charges against MoveTrek but that MA/RI/MoveTrek and 38S were trying to work together to find a resolution to make those 7 whole. Hopefully they got it. I couldn't find anything about any employees having their credit ruined and losing their house as a result of this and I'm hesitant in putting all the blame on 38S for this from the information I have, assuming the above is accurate. If the employees of the 7 unsold homes somehow truly didn't know their home was unsold by the time 38S went bankrupt then yeah, that's incredibly shitty. Something tells me though that blame might be shared equally here and that's why I'm having trouble finding information about the final resolution.
 
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popsicledeath

popsicledeath

Potato del Grande
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Yeah, the whole mortgage thing was shitty and bad, but nothing seemed to indicate it was intentionally malicious or fraud. Just like, so far, nothing seems to indicate Curt was involved in the gofundme fraud. These things seem more complicated and nuanced than Curt being bad or a criminal, but people seem to get off on gloating over the failures of famous or successful people.

Somewhat related, Kingdoms of Amular Reckoning has been remastered and released as Re-reckoning. Game just keeps on failing!
 
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jayrebb

jayrebb

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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Skinner said:
People forget or simply don't know that Massachusetts at this time under Gov. Patrick (D) was ramping up their technology/media/film sectors, hoping to be the biggest player in the country by literally offering the best possible deals in the US at the cost of Mass taxpayers despite massively burdening the tax payer short term and widely seen as unpopular. Many game and entertainment studios settled in Massachusetts during this time for this reason, and Curt was one of them. It was some time after this that RI, feeling the heat of unemployment ( 15% ) and wanting a cut of MAs action as RI suffered, poached Curt and his company from Massachusetts by offering Curt a 100% complete bullshit deal that everyone knew was bullshit except the gullible politicians of RI currently in office. When this happened the Massachusetts Gov. actually came out and gave a bizarre press conference basically saying there is absolutely zero way Massachusetts could even come close to this deal and the incentives RI was offering to Curt were crazy and unrealistic. I wish I had a video of that press conference because the way Patrick framed things and his word choice made it very obvious that the deal RI made Curt was too good to be true and MA didn't want to be anywhere near it, but neither Curt nor RI cared because each believed they would be getting something they wanted: better rates for Curt to build his dream and employment/business ventures for RI (Article 1 / Article 2).

We know what happened next. Curts first game, while popular, wasn't the massive grand slam he and RI hoped it to be, Curts company was mismanaged due to inexperience and taking on too much too soon, and like many MMOs the development cost began to grow out of control as they continuously lagged behind production. 38 studios runs out of cash, bounces a check when trying to pay back the loan and the following week while unable to make payroll, goes bankrupt. RI tries to save face by attempting to pin all the blame on 38 studios when it was them who gave a ridiculous deal and loan doomed to fail from the start to an unproven in an attempt to compete with MA and shave down unemployment heading into an election year. Curt himself actually loses his entire fortune from baseball as a result and the SEC charged Rhode Island Commerce and Wells Fargo with security fraud because both RI and Wells Fargo knew everything was bullshit surrounding the loan and knew Curt was an unproven commodity from the start who should have never received the loan he was given in the first place. RI then goes after 38 studios to try to recoup anything they can get from this disaster. No charges are filed against 38 studios.


No idea where this bullshit of curt being involved in embezzlement regarding 38 studios came from.
Click to expand...

hes not gonna fuck you dude
 
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Skinner

Skinner

Trakanon Raider
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jayrebb said:
hes not gonna fuck you dude
Click to expand...

giphy.gif
 
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Lunis

Lunis

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The political circumstances surrounding the loans is window dressing. The simple fact is that Curt set out to create a WoW level type MMO which was never going to work. WoW was lightning in a bottle and you can't recreate that. How many MMO's have we seen spend 100+ million and get nowhere? You can't predict the success of a game like WoW or now Fortnite. If you try to make a game with that kind of playerbase in mind it is almost certainly going to fail.
 
Utnayan

Utnayan

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What destroyed this was the way they went to market. Launching a 3 prong attack for toys, comics, and a game for an unknown IP was the most bone headed pie in the sky pipedream anyone could have ever thought of. Couple that with a declining MMORPG market and a shift to free to play MMORPG's with cash shops and the fork was stuck. Add Jennifer Maclean to the mess who couldn't manage a stack of post it notes from falling off a table, RA Salvatore getting royalties for dreaming up some names of characters while taking a shit in the restroom, and buying out Rolston's already damn near complete game (Called Ascension for those curious) and rebranding it Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning - and watching that get it's ass kicked because it was a defunct project for a reason (But they paid a lot to get it) ... shit. The post mortum could go on for years on this thing.

I used to harp the shit out of him because his persona for games was a ploy for marketing. Pretty sure the dude had a PR guy telling him what to say to the educated gamer when it came to games outside of EQ2 and WoW, and his business sense was jack shit. I do not think he purposely wanted everything to go south and he got his ass kicked financially. However, he tried to hide behind a Government sponsored guarantee and they went after him for it and won. So his safe way strategy didn't work.
 
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Daidraco

Daidraco

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I dont know much about Curt, I never watched or cared about Baseball all that much. But when I think of a Major League sports player - Multi-million dollar business planning does not come to mind. (But then again, my point of reference is based off of NFL Joggers.)
 
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jayrebb

jayrebb

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Utnayan said:
What destroyed this was the way they went to market. Launching a 3 prong attack for toys, comics, and a game for an unknown IP was the most bone headed pie in the sky pipedream anyone could have ever thought of. Couple that with a declining MMORPG market and a shift to free to play MMORPG's with cash shops and the fork was stuck. Add Jennifer Maclean to the mess who couldn't manage a stack of post it notes from falling off a table, RA Salvatore getting royalties for dreaming up some names of characters while taking a shit in the restroom, and buying out Rolston's already damn near complete game (Called Ascension for those curious) and rebranding it Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning - and watching that get it's ass kicked because it was a defunct project for a reason (But they paid a lot to get it) ... shit. The post mortum could go on for years on this thing.

I used to harp the shit out of him because his persona for games was a ploy for marketing. Pretty sure the dude had a PR guy telling him what to say to the educated gamer when it came to games outside of EQ2 and WoW, and his business sense was jack shit. I do not think he purposely wanted everything to go south and he got his ass kicked financially. However, he tried to hide behind a Government sponsored guarantee and they went after him for it and won. So his safe way strategy didn't work.
Click to expand...


I don't see any mention of Brett Close telling Curt the game will never be finished or released and getting axed. This happened very early on in the game's development cycle.

Any executive that spoke facts based on the balance sheet got shitcanned. Entire thing was a hoax and a scam perpetrated by Curt Schill.
 
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Shmoopy

Shmoopy

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Yeah so looking forward to this.

Who bought it and when is it being released?
 
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Fogel

Fogel

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I heard Mr Sox was able to use all the proceeds from his podcasts to scoop this up
 
popsicledeath

popsicledeath

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Blast from the past. Still makes me wonder.... I mean a prominent theme was that Curt was so corrupt and incompetent that local government had to step in and save the day. Conveniently around an election and change of party. And I remember getting a lot of pushback with my implications the government could have been acting in bad faith.

With everything we know now, in retrospect, do our presumptions make us believe more or less scrutiny or blame should have been pointed in the government's direction.

I mean, if nothing else the narrative over the situation would have been very different these days, and perhaps justifiably so.
 
Tmac

Tmac

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popsicledeath said:
Blast from the past. Still makes me wonder.... I mean a prominent theme was that Curt was so corrupt and incompetent that local government had to step in and save the day. Conveniently around an election and change of party. And I remember getting a lot of pushback with my implications the government could have been acting in bad faith.

With everything we know now, in retrospect, do our presumptions make us believe more or less scrutiny or blame should have been pointed in the government's direction.

I mean, if nothing else the narrative over the situation would have been very different these days, and perhaps justifiably so.
Click to expand...

I think both are true.

I think Curt spent money like a fool (going as far as paying for employees to be moved into their homes and maybe even their homes?) and the new dem gov acted in bad faith calling in the debt years before it was due. Or maybe it was due but they refused to renegotiate?

Idk, Curt never should’ve worked w the government. That’s on him, particularly given his opinions.
 
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