Earlier this month, game developer 38 Studios filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy after the company behind this year"s fantasy RPG Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning fell apart after simply running out of money. That money included a massive loan from the Rhode Island government that was worth $75 million.
Throughout this saga, the founder of 38 Studios, former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, has mostly stayed out of the public eye, with the exception of one interview where he claimed that the state of Rhode Island had broken promises to the company, which the state"s governor has denied.
Now Boston.com reports that in a new interview on the WEEI radio station, Schilling talked more about the failed game studio, saying he is personally "tapped out" after spending over $50 million of his own money in 38 Studios.
In the interview, Schilling states: “I put everything in my name in this company ...I believed in it. I believed in what we built. I never took a penny in salary. I never took a penny for anything." He added that 38 Studios" now former employees, which numbered close to 400 when the ax fell, have a right to be upset about what happened. Schilling said, "I always told everybody if something were going to happen, you‘re going to have a month or two of lead time, and I bombed on that one in epic fashion."
Much of the money spent by 38 Studios went into developing a large scale MMO game with the code name Project Copernicus. Schilling said, "One of the going concerns from Day One – and it was always something that we were cognizant of – is we needed to raise capital ... We tried for a long time to do that and it didn’t come to fruition."
Schilling is also still trying to put the blame, at least in part, on the state of Rhode Island for what happened to the company. Schilling claims that at one point, an unnamed investor said that he was willing to put in $15 million to $20 million into 38 Studios if the government of Rhode Island would also pitch in some additional tax credits as well as a renegotiation of the original loan agreement. Schilling said that the state refused that offer.
Source: Boston.com