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Epic Games president Mike Capps has announced that his studio will be providing jobs for many of the eighty or so Big Huge Games employees who lost their jobs in the wake of the 38 Studios’ implosion last month. Presently nicknamed ‘Epic Baltimore,’ the subsidiary studio is set to give work to the former Amalur devs sometime in the future. In a post on the official Epic community page, Capps said that he had been in talks with ex-BHG leaders over the past week, discussing potential ways to “keep together some of the key talent displaced by the layoff.” He mentioned that the former BHG leadership team initially wished to use an Epic IP as a “starting point,” but that “it was pretty clear they’d have trouble building a demo and securing funding before their personal savings ran out.” “In one of life’s coincidences,” Capps went on to say, “Epic’s directors had spent the morning discussing how we’d love to build even more successful projects with our growing team, but that we’d need a dramatic infusion of top talent to do so. Which, we all knew, was impossible. “So now we’re planning to start an impossible studio in Baltimore. :)” 
There is no word yet on just how much of the former BHG team will be picked up by Epic, but Capps does note that a handful of the laid off “refugees” have been picked up by studios such as “Zynga East, Zenimax Online, and other southeastern studios,” so it won’t be the entire squad. Likewise, there’s no word on exactly what game the future studio will be working on, but Capps urges everyone to “please give us some time to figure it out; we hope to have more to share soon.” In the all-too-volatile world of present-day game development, news like this is certainly refreshing to see. “Epic’s in a situation where we can do this,” Capps concluded, “and it very clearly fits with our company values, so we’re going to give it a whirl.” By Jeff Dunn |
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