They’re doing ”everything possible” to maximise their return from the big state loan given to the studio. Epic Baltimore, made up of former Big Huge Games devs, won’t make a sequel.
38 Studios subsidiary Big Huge went the way of its parent but Epic Games stepped in and snapped up much of the development team. They didn’t buy any IP though.
That means there’ll be no chance of a Kingdoms of Amalur sequel coming from Epic. Instead they’ll work on one of their own internal IPs which is ”a very good, natural fit” for them, said co-founder Mark Rein.
”We don’t buy IP, we make IP,” he added.
Epic president Mike Capps was instrumental in getting Epic Baltimore founded, saving plenty of video game developers from having to scramble for new jobs elsewhere. ”Mike is the total hero there. They called him on Wednesday, interested in using one of our IPs. He flew them up the next day and they met with a whole bunch of people, and the board of directors of Epic. We made the call right there: ‘These guys are awesome, we need to work with them,’” recalled Rein.
”We don’t have a final headcount yet. It’s a decent number. Many of the people there had already gone on to places. This was just the core group of really experienced guys who already had savings saved up that they tried to build a team and find a deal.”
How much can the state of Rhode Island get for the Kingdoms of Amalur IP? The new franchise didn’t sell enough for 38 Studios to break even, and the development of their MMO set in the same universe stretched their finances.
