Rhode Island Now Owns Kingdoms of Amalur

Rhode Island has won court approval to take control of all assets owned by 38 Studios, including the rights to Kingdoms of Amalur. As decided yesterday by U.S. bankruptcy judge Mary Walrath, The Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation and BNY Mellon (an investment services firm) will take possession of all of 38 Studios’ assets, including its intellectual property, as payment for the unpaid $75 million loan granted to 38 Studios by the state.

According to a report from Bloomberg, the state will attempt to sell the assets in order to provide the proceeds to the remaining balance on 38’s loan. Bloomberg reports that both parties claimed that they needed to take action immediately because “if the trustee appointed to dismantle the game-maker received permission to abandon computer equipment ‘all or substantially all of the intellectual property could be irretrievably lost.’” The intellectual property is said to make up the “vast majority” of 38’s value and “will take weeks to preserve and transfer to new servers.”

38 Studios was originally founded in Massachusetts, but moved to Rhode Island after receiving a $75 million loan and pledging “its video-game assets, patents, software and other property” as collateral. The studio went on to release Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning in February and owned Big Huge Games, which was working on an MMO set in the Amalur universe.

Following the release of Amalur, 38 Studios ran into financial troubles and eventually laid off its entire staff in May, which led studio founder Curt Schilling to lose his entire baseball fortune.

The studio filed for bankruptcy on June 7th, and executives have been testifying in court in the weeks since, revealing that 38 owed Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning publisher Electronic Arts $30 million in addition to the $75 million the studio owed Rhode Island.

While it hasn’t been announced who could potentially buy 38’s intellectual property from Rhode Island, reports in the past indicated that Grand Theft Auto publisher Take Two was once interested in financing an Amalur sequel. In addition, EA president Frank Gibeau commented recently that EA “would love to be a partner” for a sequel to the game.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following him on Twitter or IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com