Amalur Devs Now with Epic Games

It seems Amalur II might still happen — at least in spirit anyway — as Big Huge Games has just been saved by Epic Games.

Big Huge Games is, of course, a subsidiary of 38 Studios; the same studio who released the acclaimed Kingdoms of Amalur: Recokong RPG…they're also the same studio who owed the state of Rhode Island a ton of money and was eventually forced to closed down.

If you're wondering how Big Huge Games and Epic Games crossed paths, it's simply because Epic is looking for more talent and Big Huge Games is just what they were looking for.

Mike Capps, president of Epic, took to the company's official site to announce their new partnership. 

On Wednesday, the ex-BHG leadership team contacted us.  They wanted to start a new company and keep together some of the key talent displaced by the layoff, and hoped that they could use an Epic IP as a starting point for a new game.  We loved that they all wanted to keep working together, but 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, 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.  

 

It’ll take a while to find space, set up desks and PCs, purchase sufficient Nerf weaponry and Dr. Pepper, etc.  But some of these folks have been going too long without a paycheck to wait for that.  So, as soon as we can, we’re going to try to get people working down here at Epic headquarters in Cary, NC as contractors.

 

There’s a million things to work out.  How many of the team can we hire?  What will it be called?  What will they be working on?  We don’t know all the answers yet.  Please give us some time to figure it out; we hope to have more to share soon.

 

The way we see it, there’s been a big storm in Baltimore, and we’re taking in a few of the refugees — as are the awesome folks at Zynga East, Zenimax Online, and other southeastern studios.  Epic’s in a situation where we can do this, and it very clearly fits with our company values, so we’re going to give it a whirl.