Curt Schilling is broke after losing $50 million in video game investment

[eazyb81]

What a moron.


Former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling says he's "tapped out" financially after personally investing "north of $50 million" into his failed 38 Studios video game company.<O:p</O:p
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That revelation came Friday morning as Schilling spent 90 minutes in the WEEI studios with the "Dennis & Callahan Show." Where this puts Schilling's overall financial picture is unclear — Baseball-Reference estimates the pitcher made a total of $114 million in salary from 1990-2008 — but he said he is preparing his family for a "very different" life in the future.<O:p</O:p
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From WEEI:<O:p</O:p
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Schilling said he sat down his family about a month ago and explained to them that "38 Studios was probably going to fail and go bankrupt, and that the money that I had earned and saved during baseball was probably all gone. And that it was my fault. And that they might start hearing some things in school and things like that. And let's be clear: We're not talking about a terminal illness or somebody (dying). But it's a life-changing thing. It's not a conversation I would wish on any father, or on anybody. But I had to do it, and explain to them that part of growing up is being accountable. This was my decision to do this, and I failed. And life would probably start to change and be very different for us."<O:p</O:p
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There's likely a lot of people taking some schadenfreude from Schilling's bad news. He was an outspoken player during his day (and remains that way today) while a lot of people also disagree with his politics. Those employees and their families who were "blindsided" by the company's bankruptcy, and <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:State w:st="on"><ST1:pRhode Island </ST1:p</st1:State>taxpayers who guaranteed a $75 million loan to 38 Studios are probably also glad that Schilling didn't escape without his own penalty.
<O:p</O:p
Where Schilling goes from here is anybody's guess. His bills are likely to mount as creditors come after him with legal proceedings. His gift for gab probably ensures that he'll always be able to draw a paycheck in the baseball analysis world, but it'll be a mere drop in the bucket to the money he just lost by severely overestimating his worth as a businessman and video game maker.


http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/curt-schilling-says-tapped-financially-failure-video-game-175016849--mlb.html

[Thig Lyfe]

That bus monitor lady should donate some of her money to him.

[BigMeatballDave]

Wow.

Why would you invest everything?

[eazyb81]

Wow.

Why would you invest everything?

Probably because you are a greedy, arrogant moron.

[vailpass]

mind=blown

[Brock]

Ha ha.

[kcxiv]

WEll, he tried to create more jobs, jobs with great pay, but he ran out of money. I dont htink he fully understood what it took to make an mmo on the scale he wanted too.

He tried, and lost everything, not the first or the last time something like that will happen. At least he didnt blow it on partying.

[BigMeatballDave]

Probably because you are a greedy, arrogant moron.

Heh. I suppose.

[Dr. Johnny Fever]

Wow. He'll need to panhandle with some more fake blood on his sock for sympathy.

[Bump]

Age of Reckoning was a great game, too bad that studio failed.

[Rain Man]

Wow. That's gotta hurt.

I wonder what went wrong. You would think that video game design is a pretty mature industry now in terms of production costs, and if you look at their web site it doesn't look like they ever even got a product to market: http://38studios.com/about

[Swanman]

WEll, he tried to create more jobs, jobs with great pay, but he ran out of money. I dont htink he fully understood what it took to make an mmo on the scale he wanted too.

He tried, and lost everything, not the first or the last time something like that will happen. At least he didnt blow it on partying.

It's an RPG, not an MMO. The sad thing is that the game is DAMN good. They just bit off more than they could chew with the first game and it probably could have been publicized better. I had trouble finding the game in places like Best Buy.

[kcxiv]

It's an RPG, not an MMO. The sad thing is that the game is DAMN good. They just bit off more than they could chew with the first game and it probably could have been publicized better. I had trouble finding the game in places like Best Buy.

no, cornipicus is an MMO. The age of Reconing is an RPG. The RPG didnt bankrupt him Cornipcus did. Reckoning wasnt even made by 38 studios.

[Jenson71]

Probably because you are a greedy, arrogant moron.

Is there some back story to this that the OP doesn't address? This is pretty bad news, not just for Schilling, but also because it's a loss or a dead end in jobs, state investments, expected property tax and state tax revenue.

[MIAdragon]

Wow. He'll need to panhandle with some more fake blood on his sock for sympathy.

http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/harrison-ford-finger-point-2.jpg

[Dartgod]

That's gonna be a bummer having that tattoo remind him every day of his failure.

http://content.38studios.com/sites/cms/files/images/Curt_Schilling_Ink.jpg

[vailpass]

That's gonna be a bummer having that tattoo remind him every day of his failure.

http://content.38studios.com/sites/cms/files/images/Curt_Schilling_Ink.jpg

LMAO Oh man he's gonna' have to have that removed. Either that or they'll find he cut it off right before he hanged himself.

[Mr. Laz]

Age of Reckoning was a great game, too bad that studio failed.
yea, i don't understand why it failed so badly.

good game

business part must of been poorly run.

[Bugeater]

Another classic case of someone thinking they are smarter than they actually are because they have a lot of money.

[NaptownChief]

Wow. That's gotta hurt.

I wonder what went wrong. You would think that video game design is a pretty mature industry now in terms of production costs, and if you look at their web site it doesn't look like they ever even got a product to market: http://38studios.com/about

$50 million of his own money, $75 million loan...That's $125 million and nothing to market...Sounds like they were trying to make "green" video games with that kind of inefficiency. :D

[eazyb81]

Another classic case of someone thinking they are smarter than they actually are because they have a lot of money.


He was a great baseball player! That means he must be great at business too, right?

What an idiot. His family could have lived like royalty if he just put his money in a savings account.

[NaptownChief]

Probably because you are a greedy, arrogant moron.

I'm sure he didn't go in with anything close to that idea...unfortunately this happens a lot. You put up a reasonable amount of money then the monster needs a little more, then a little more and now you have sunk so much in you don't have the balls/ability/brains or heart to walk away because you have already sunk so much money, time and emotional energy into it and the business probably looks like it is "close" to turn the corner....next thing you know you have thrown a ton of good money after bad and been completely fisted.

[Psyko Tek]

so which is the good game?
sorry curt loved you when you were with the Dbacks, but the unit was still the better pitcher

[Setsuna]

Kingdoms of Amalur is the game. And it was pretty sick. They were using KoA world as the setting for an MMO they planned to come out with. Guess it didn't work out. That's a darn shame.

[BWillie]

Eh dude took a shot and missed, can't fault him there. Pretty dumb to invest 50% of your career earnings into one spot, but hey, he went for it.

[MIAdragon]

so which is the good game?
sorry curt loved you when you were with the Dbacks, but the unit was still the better pitcher

You dont win the 01 WS with out Shilling.

[BigMeatballDave]

Eh dude took a shot and missed, can't fault him there. Pretty dumb to invest 50% of your career earnings into one spot, but hey, he went for it.

LOL

Yeah, so what? Its only 50m.

[Deberg_1990]

Wow. He'll need to panhandle with some more fake blood on his sock for sympathy.

I'm sure plenty of Bosox fans would gladly donate to his retirement fund for finally delivering them a WS title.
Posted via Mobile Device

[dirk digler]

He also begged the government to bail him out.

[PunkinDrublic]

He also begged the government to bail him out.

Nah man he's a republican he'll pull himself up by his own bootstraps.

[Basileus777]

I feel worse for the Rhode Island tax payers that had to fund his project and for the 100s of employee that lost their jobs thanks to his mismanagement.

He also begged the government to bail him out.
Rhode Island gave him a $70 million loan, then he wanted a bail out when he missed payments. The studio is closed down and now tax payers have to pay off the loan, great!

[sedated]

After reading how that company screwed over Rhode Island taxpayers, I feel no sympathy for him. It almost seems like he thought he could waste the money and get away scott-free.

[Fairplay]

I think he will come back from this set back. Not as rich as he was, but he will come out a better person.

[BigMeatballDave]

I feel worse for the Rhode Island tax payers that had to fund his project and for the 100s of employee that lost their jobs thanks to his mismanagement.


Rhode Island gave him a $70 million loan, then he wanted a bail out when he missed payments. The studio is closed down and now tax payers have to pay off the loan, great!

Wow.

Fuck him.

[Cannibal]

Nah man he's a republican he'll pull himself up by his own bootstraps.

Yeah believe he was a tea partier that hates the gov and cried about bailouts. Then of course was happy to take a bailout himself.

[JD10367]

I thought the state was retarded to give him the tax break in the first place. But it's hard to laugh and say "I told you so" when I'm one of the taxpayers eating shit now.

[mcaj22]

the craziest part is schilling isnt even the dumbest person out of all this. it's that gov of Rhode Island or whatever that actually bought in and believed that a guy like Schilling could make the state of Rhode Island the next Silicon Valley. The fact that Schilling got an entire state to back this whole mess is amazing to me.

He must have really sold the people of that state on a fucking dream. A dream that ended up being a complete nightmare.

That's what happens when you try to compete with the big dogs like World of Warcraft though. (Yes, I know Schillings game was single player, but the goal was to make it a MMORPG, and they def ran out of resources to pull it off, and just went single player, and thus it fully tanked because who in the blue hell plays a single player RPG in the year 2012 that isnt something credible like Skyrim?)

had Schilling taken even half this money and invested into someone like Riot Games, he would be sitting pretty.

[Rasputin]

He broke apart in mid~air

[Mr. Laz]

Nah man he's a republican he'll pull himself up by his own bootstraps.

cough,cough*bullshit*cough,cough

[Sure-Oz]

Dumbass...made over 100 mill and blew it all.

Atleast he still has a job at espn he cant be that broke

[KC Jones]

That's what happens when you try to compete with the big dogs like World of Warcraft though. (Yes, I know Schillings game was single player, but the goal was to make it a MMORPG, and they def ran out of resources to pull it off, and just went single player, and thus it fully tanked because who in the blue hell plays a single player RPG in the year 2012 that isnt something credible like Skyrim?)
.

That is not exactly how it happened. His company was solely focused on and making the MMORPG. They acquired a studio that had an RPG in progress. They retrofitted the acquired assets to be the same 'world' as his MMO so that it could act like an introduction to the MMO universe. I think they mistakenly thought the single player launch would fund their ambitious MMO venture, and while it was a good game it wasn't great. It will be interesting to see if any of the other large studios decide there is something worth picking up on the cheap and making a go of the MMO.

[Skyy God]

Shilling is a giant piece of shit. In no particular order:

He blamed his failure to secure additional financing on the RI governor pointing out the obvious, that 38 Studios was bankrupt.

Schilling also criticized Chafee's "devastating" public remarks about 38 Studios' financial health, which he says scared off private investors.

Within 72 hours of Chafee's May 14 statement that the state was trying to keep 38 Studios "solvent," Schilling says, a video-game publisher pulled out of a $35-million deal to finance a sequel to Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, the fantasy game that 38 Studios released in February.

http://news.providencejournal.com/breaking-news/2012/05/sa-editing-schi.html

He applied for $20M in tax credits while 38 Studios was imploding.

38 Studios has applied for more than $20 million worth of tax credits spanning two years, credits they've already said they plan to sell to another firm for cold hard cash.

http://deadspin.com/5911596/

All while being an up by your bootstraps hypocrite.

"There can be no question our country is in the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes. I also think there can be no question that it falls on us, the individuals, to find a way out of our own personal crisis."

http://deadspin.com/5911596/

And he may have obtained illegal loans with those tax credits as collateral.

"The state police, the attorney general's office, the U.S. Attorney's office and the FBI are opening an investigation into 38 Studios, both the money that came from the state as well as the money that came from Bank Rhode Island," Rhode Island State Police Col. Steven O'Donnell told WPRI.com on Thursday afternoon.

The investigation has something to do with the company's attempts to obtain loans secured with tax credits that were never issued.

http://deadspin.com/5916674/curt-schillings-38-studios-files-for-bankruptcy-faces-federal-investigation