'Kingdoms of Amalur' Studio Goes Belly Up

There's sad news traveling the wires today, boys and girls. If you've been keeping your ear to the railroad tracks, then you know that the developers behind "Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning," 38 Studios and its subsidiary, Big Huge Games, have been suffering from a severe case of financial woes.

Well, matters took a turn for the worse on Thursday, when pink slips were issued to all the employees of both development houses, and the doors were officially shut tight. Apparently, the company borrowed a metric ton of money from the state of Rhode Island (to the tune of $75 million), and despite reasonably successful sales numbers, were unable to make the expected payments for that loan.

Not only did they miss making a 1.1 million dollar payment to the state of Rhode Island - without notice - but when they finally did cough up the dough, the check in question bounced. That had to be... really embarrassing.

Of course, everyone involved got busy telling the media that everything was okay, and that all would turn out for the best. But when the dice finally stopped rolling, the state Governor, Lincoln D Chafee, decided there was no way he could justify giving the game studio more money to bail them out, which is apparently what would have needed to happen.

So, wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. There you have it. 38 Studios and Big Huge Games are officially out of business, the promised patch that was meant to address significant game issues is never coming, and from what I gather, the IP for Amalur is going to default to the state of Rhode Island. I can only assume they'll auction it off to the highest bidder in an effort to repay some of that massive loan money.