In incredibly bad news, it’s been announced tonight that 38 Studios, and its wholly owned subsidiary Big Huge Games (Age Of Empires III, Rise Of Nations), are laying off their entire workforce. The Curt Schilling-owned enterprise was in a noticeably shaky state earlier this month when it was unable to make a repayment for a massive $75m loan it had taken from Rhode Island state in 2010, despite decent sales of Kingdoms Of Amular, and great promises of an MMO to come. Having just managed to make this repayment, staff began to notice that something was still up as paychecks failed to arrive in bank accounts, and health insurances were running out. And now, in a rather unpleasantly brisk email, they’ve learned that all 379 of them are immediately out of a job.

(more…)