That's so crazy it might just work!

They didn't fire everybody, they just laid off the contractors and temp employees.

That got them in the ballpark (pun intended) to make the amount that they needed to cover the check ... so they sent someone one over with a hand written check before they finished doing all the math and figured out that they were still a little short; so the state returned the check at 38 Studios request.

a few hours latter, they turned the check back in with enough money in the bank to cover it.

off the top of my head: Curt Schilling, RA Salvatore, Todd McFarlane, and EA are invested in this project getting completed ... "invested" and "completely invested" are entirely separate things. EA wipes it's ass with million dollar bills and the three other big names are all multimillionaires.

I'm sure that any one of them could have pulled the mill out of their back pocket if they had known company wasn't going to be able to make the payment before the deadline passed.

hell, McFarlane paid 3 mill for a fucking baseball .... this game is going to have no problem getting to market.

This thing is toast.

They had to scrape to make a single loan payment this time. It's not like KoA is going to continue generating even the level of sales and revenue that it has so far looking forward, so when sales start dropping where does the new money come from?

I don't see any reason why MacFarlane or Salvatore would throw their money in. They AREN'T invested. they got paid for work developing character/monster models and writing land lore. Why the Hell would they throw their own money in to a project run by a company that barely makes one loan payment? If Schilling was going to pay in bigger, he probably would have already to avoid the horrendous press the company has gotten thanks to this debacle, since that bad press is going to make it pretty much impossible for the company to secure any more financial backing.

And why would EA pay in? They've managed to finally largely turn themselves around financially by stopping financially backing bad projects.

Ulitma Online, as mentioned above, but also The Sims Online & Warhammer Online. All of these have been made by companies fully owned by EA.

because it's almost done.

and fronting money to the company wouldn't be charity, it would be with the intention of getting a bigger slice of the profits pie when the game ships.

Oh yes. Fronting money to a company whose name has just been poisoned publicly because they haven't proven capable of making a single, solitary loan payment. Yes, that sounds like a brilliant investment...

yeah, those horrible bastards ... how dare they not have a million dollars.

it was a fuck up, and a stupid fuck up at that, but they don't have to make another payment till next year.

the game will ship, and it will make money.

besides, why are you so butt hurt? as of this moment they only ones that are kinda up shit creek are the temps and contractors, but if your one of them you should be back to work pretty soon (wither back at 38 or with another company) and except for the suddenness of the release you should have been prepared for it.

They don't have a million dollars to make a payment. what other payments are they not financially capable of making? Seriously, if they can't pay back their loan, WHAT CAN THEY PAY FOR? Where is the money going to come from the finish development on, and then support, a full fledged MMO? Clearly the people involved have no interest in throwing the money in, and no financial institution is going to front them another loan now. The revenue from KoA clearly isn't sufficient to cover it. So where does the money come from?

And it isn't like this thing is some sort of guaranteed cash cow if it does make it to release. That's a pretty crowded market out there, and if the MMO is as utterly generic as KoA was, there is no 'hook' to bring in new gamers who will spend the money to make it a viable product.

As for being 'butt hurt', it's called presenting a realistic picture of just how big a mess this game and company are in. For a product to be finished and run well, it needs capital. this company clearly doesn't have enough capital, and they're unlikely to find more now that their name is dirt and their financial status is highly questionable.

I don't really care about the game and have never worked for the company. But if you think this was just a little blip and everything is smooth sailing from this point forward, you are incredibly naive.

Blarrrrgh, awoooooga, blarrrrrg!

lets all go kill those bastards!

those fifthly hedonistic whore sons nose pickers!

38 studios still has plenty of resources left; there is a good chance that they still have 15 mill in the bank account but it was tied up with foretasted budgeting expenses for the next year, and even if they are out of money they could still sell off the Big Huge Games division for more than enough to get the game finished.

other options would be to renegotiate with EA for funding to finish the project, at the expense of EA getting a bigger take of the profits once the game is launched.

at the very least 38 studios goes under and RI contracts the IP to someone else to finish, or sells it completely ... as I pointed out, there are plenty of people with exceptionally deep pockets that would gladly pay out 75 mill to get their hands on a nearly complete MMO that has had at least 100 million worth of development funneled into it.

The same Big Huge Games that sold for a pittance this last time after they had sat on the market for awhile because nobody was all that interested in owning them? Why is the value of that studio suddenly jacked so high up that selling it off would fund game development?

Again, why would EA throw more money in to the project? What possibly incentive do they have to fund yet another MMO, especially one whose future is certainly in a lot of doubt?

If 38 Studios had millions in the bank, they would have found a way to spend it to make this payment. Period. Because not making this payment has absolutely poisoned their name in the marketplace, particularly in terms of being able to get more financing for any project for the near future.

And maybe it would be finished elsewhere when/if RI closes out the company and parcels it off. But since there is nothing really all that noteworthy about this game aside from the financial problems suffered by the company developing it, it isn't like this is some guaranteed profit monster just waiting to give millions to whoever puts it out.

And why exactly are you so invested in this? Seriously, you're kind of having a fit. As I said before, I have no interest in the game. It sucks that a lot of people might end up out of work because of financial mismanagement, but I've certainly never said "LET'S GO GET EM!" or any other nonsense that you seem to be hinting at.