Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning - On this day

The video game industry is indeed spinning huge amounts of money. But it’s also true that the video game market most often doesn’t tolerate solid games. The best example of this was seen on this day ten years ago. Namely, the companies 38 Studios and Electronic Arts have jointly launched Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, a fantasy RPG in the creation of which tens of millions of dollars have been invested.

The world of Amalur was unhappy from the very beginning. Enviable talent worked on it - Spawn author Todd McFarlane, fantasy writer R. A. Salvatore; and later Ken Rolston, chief designer of Morrowind and Oblivion. It was supposed to be a world with 10,000 years of rich history that would be the basis for one big MMORPG title.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning was supposed to introduce players to that world and prepare them for a bigger game, but something was missing. I honestly don’t remember what exactly - it just wasn’t an adventure to remember. The only things I remember are the big open worlds and a pretty practical combat system.

The game came out just three months after Skyrim, and although it started well in sales, there was no hope for it in the long run. It was a failure that cost 38 Studios a fair amount, considering that 450 people were committed to hiring 450 people with a loan of as much as $ 75 million.

The company went bankrupt just three months after the game came out, but their debts have been the subject of lawsuits for many years. Amalur pulled the thickest end in all of this and became one of the most expensive virtual worlds to fail after just one game.

Admittedly, the bailout came years later, when THQ Nordic bought the rights to the series. Since then, Kingdoms of Amalur has received its remaster, albeit a disappointingly basic one and in 2021, after a long break, the game was expanded with a new story in an expansion called Fatesworn.