If you’ve been following industry news, which I assume you have since you’re reading this post, you already know that 38 Studios just bit the dust in a major way. The studio shut down completely thanks to financial mismanagement, taking with it sub-studio Big Huge games and hopes for a Kingdoms of Amalur sequel.

However, Epic Games must have seen some potential in the talent pool over at Big Huge, and is stepping up in a major way to lessen the impact of the studio closures on devs. Epic has announced its intentions to start a brand new studio based out of Baltimore, and fill that studio with as many former Big Huge Games employees as possible.

This deal was fostered by Big Huge’s senior management, who touched base with Epic president Mike Capps and brought up the idea of a sister studio. As it turns out, Epic was looking for the exact same thing:

“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.”

Awesome how things work out, huh? Things are still in the planning phases, so there’s no word on A. a studio name B. potential games or C. how many devs get to stay on. For now, at least, it looks like at least some of the laid off employees will have a good place to go—assuming Zynga East, ZeniMax Online and the other studios in the area don’t snatch them up first.

[Edge]

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