38 Studios is Working on a Game, Apparently, Afterall (Kingdoms of Amular)

[kildorn]

A job suddenly going tits up is a pretty horrible situation for normal people. Your finances typically are not planned on the idea that you may lack an income as of yesterday/that last doctor's visit may cost $8,000 instead of $80, etc.

A company winding down is not supposed to be a sudden binary thing entirely because it fucks with everyone's lives (employees, creditors, various service contracts and whatnot) and is entirely avoidable as an Oh Shit moment because the company has all the numbers in front of them to see that they're going to have to halt operations around X day with their current cash flow.

38 had those numbers, and was already trying to fudge them by not paying bills, yet was STILL hiring people and relocating them over. That's unbelievably irresponsible (and, imo, probably fraud to offer a benefit that you knowingly are no longer actually paying when the ink is drying on the contract). I consider it pretty much another form of bait and switch bullshit with job offers. Being a manager is taking on responsibility to both the company AND your employees. My irritation with the 38 studios fiasco is only slightly monetary about the loan, and mostly being pissed at the management team acting like they had no idea they were supposed to be the responsible ones at the company.

[Paelos]

It should be used as a cautionary tale for a lot of reasons. Both on the management side, and from the employee side to be skeptical about your employer.

[UnsGub]

.. Two, the people that uproot their families, lives, jobs, and kids to gamble on an unestablished business of any kind better be largely aware that it could explode at any time. It was a huge gamble on their part, as opposed to moving somewhere to work for Coke or Lowes.

Working in the tech industry is risky, working in the game industry more so.  I went back to tech from games partly for that reason.  Other main reason was quality of life.

If one does not know, understand, accept, etc. that working in those businesses has a possible outcome of the company no longer existing probably should not be there to begin with.

Half the companies I worked for no longer exist.  Half never made a profit.  Some were well run and failed or not so and succeeded.  Others I no longer want to work at (MS\HP).  Tech is complicated and hard but does offer huge rewards.  These types of stories will continue in tech and game industries.

[HaemishM]

The answer is simple though. You walk away from the houses in RI and hand them back to the bank. You move back into your old location and resume your life, chalk it up to experience, and get a new job.

And then you hope you never need credit for anything ever again.

Hope you don't need another house for 7 years. Which is fairly avoidable considering you still own one. If you think people will take the credit knock seriously long-term after the shitstorm we've been through? Nobody would ever get a loan again.

Let me just tell you this is a horribly shitty and insensitive attitude to take from someone who I'm going to guess has never been through a foreclosure. It isn't something you just say "Oh just let the other house go and so what if you lose your credit rating." I don't care who you are, losing your home to a foreclosure is a mindfucking stressful experience made all the worse by fuckheads who will then say that paying bills is some kind of high moral obligation.

[Paelos]

Let me just tell you this is a horribly shitty and insensitive attitude to take from someone who I'm going to guess has never been through a foreclosure. It isn't something you just say "Oh just let the other house go and so what if you lose your credit rating." I don't care who you are, losing your home to a foreclosure is a mindfucking stressful experience made all the worse by fuckheads who will then say that paying bills is some kind of high moral obligation.

I've been through 20+. All clients. All as their advocate against the banks. The common theme is that it's more emotional than actual, and if you can take that away you'll be a better person for it. The long-term effect of it in this economy is minimal, but the banks have people mind-fucked to believe the latter part of what you've pointed out.

Hell, I'm going into a meeting today to work out a negotiation deal with some 3rd party fuckheads over a real estate deal that's been dead for 4 years. I'm dealing with the IRS trying to attach a $1.1M forgiveness of debt audit to a guy who lost his condo deal back in 2007.

I'm not being a dick or dismissive about this. I'm giving you actual financial stuff that I see and deal with on a daily basis. These people are terrified and they need somebody to be on their side to tell them it's just not as bad as they've been lead to believe.

[HaemishM]

My point is saying "OH JUST FORECLOSE IT'LL ONLY SHITCAN YOUR CREDIT FOR 7 YEARS!" is shitty, insensitive advice to someone who got skullfucked by an employer that shouldn't have been allowed to run a fucking lemonade stand. If you ain't personally been through it, you have no fucking idea what it's like and should probably shut your piehole.

[Merusk]

Emotions are always a bad thing to have in financial discussion. They add nothing and cause lots of problems, case in point right here.

They can be "fucked" for 7 years - which isn't really fucked - or struggle and strain and drain all resources to the bone and THEN be fucked.  One is a better way out than the other.

It's stressful because you've got a huge amount of ego and personal finance wrapped in to that building.  If it's that much and you're worried about it you shouldn't have taken that risk OR gotten cash up front and signed-over the deed to someone else so it was their problem.  Until you do that transfer of ownership and pay off the old loan you're still on the hook and should know that as a rational adult.  There's bad actors on all sides here.

[HaemishM]

I'm pretty sure the bad actor was the guy who told these home owners their house sale would be taken care of so buy a new house and get back to work, not the worker who trusted his boss the big name celebrity douchenozzle.

[Khaldun]

You know, the interesting thing is that I'm pretty sure most of us were semi-conscious that this is how the story was likely to end back when Schilling was popping in here to talk about how cool his game was going to be. There were a couple of points where he was just this close to saying it was going to have fetuspults in it, which is hilarious when it's some Walter Mitty-ish wanna-be designer kid kid in his momma's basement in Florida and less hilarious when it's a guy with an actual company and actual employees.

[Count Nerfedalot]

I love the fact that weeks after everyone else stopped getting paid, Uncle Bob (likely among those with the best financial cushion for handling these little bumps life throws at you) wrote himself an $18 grand (I think it was?) check for all his hard work winding the company down.

[Paelos]

My point is saying "OH JUST FORECLOSE IT'LL ONLY SHITCAN YOUR CREDIT FOR 7 YEARS!" is shitty, insensitive advice to someone who got skullfucked by an employer that shouldn't have been allowed to run a fucking lemonade stand. If you ain't personally been through it, you have no fucking idea what it's like and should probably shut your piehole.

Or you could stop acting ridiculous and recognize that I help people with this on a daily basis. The attitude people have towards the process is the problem, not the process. You're being emotional and not listening at all to what I'm saying.

EDIT: Merusk put it very well. A lot of people have massive egos about walking away from their problem, whereas it's often the right thing to do.

[HaemishM]

You were saying that this shit didn't ruin people's lives with statements like "Oh they can just let the 2nd mortgage foreclosure and take the credit hit" and "Why don't they just go on COBRA?"

[Paelos]

You were saying that this shit didn't ruin people's lives with statements like "Oh they can just let the 2nd mortgage foreclosure and take the credit hit" and "Why don't they just go on COBRA?"

I was wrong on the COBRA part. It was a chapter 7, not an 11 bankruptcy. I pointed that out.

Look, I consider it a personal point of mine to hammer this home to people because they've been so brainwashed by the foreclosure doomcloud. I fight them on it all the time, and in the end they usually do the right thing when they finally take the emotional side out of it. It's not going to ruin your life. It's not going to keep you from ever owning anything ever again. It's not just you in this economy. It's not a shot to your manhood, or your ability to provide for a family. It's not admitting defeat. It's not a failure. You are very much at the whim of the economic reality that is so much bigger than just yourself and your decisions.

It sucks, and it hurts, and it seems like your world may be falling apart. My job is to stand behind them and assure them it's not. So yeah, it is that simple as walking away. The hard part is fighting the same attitude you're tossing at me right now.

[WayAbvPar]

Just because they don't actually lapse into a coma and die from a foreclosure or bankruptcy doesn't mean it isn't a big problem, one they shouldn't have had to deal with had their employer not been A) completely irrresponsible, and B) hiding A) from their employees to try squeeze a few more months out of them. Sure the problem has a solution, but it is neither ideal nor painless.

[CmdrSlack]

Sorry, Paelos, but both RI and GA are recourse states. Exposing someone to a potential deficiency judgment is not exactly what I'd call a simple walk away process.

The vast majority of states provide for lenders recovering the difference between the loan balance and the real market value of the home. How that market value is determined varies from state-to-state. For example, in Illinois, the Illinois Mortgage Foreclosure Law provides that, in general, the value of the property is assumed to be the winning bid at the foreclosure sale. Given that a significant number of homes are underwater, simply "giving the house back to the bank" is not that simple.

Moreover, in states that are lien theory states, the homeowner remains the legal title owner until the bank completes the foreclosure process. This means that the homeowner is still liable for injuries caused on the property, the property tax payments, home owner association fees/assessments, and other fun stuff.

There are a handful of ways that someone can safely walk away from a property in a recourse state, and "just walk away" is not one of them.

For the most part, borrowers who can satisfy the means test and also don't have large amounts of non-exempt assets are likely better filing a Chapter 7 bankruptcy if they are thinking of walking away. This way, the personal liability on the note is eliminated. Yes, borrower remains the title owner (at least in lien theory states) in this scenario, but the biggest risk is mitigated. It's also possible to qualify for an FHA-backed mortgage 2 years out of a Chapter 7, so it is often better than  foreclosure for this purpose.

I agree that removing emotion from what is a business decision is a good idea, but don't make it sound like it's that simple -- it isn't. Representing it as being simple is disingenuous and bad advice to those who want a predictable solution that minimizes risk.


Edit -- Also, some tactics may work in one state but not in another. See also: Chapter 13 surrenders of real property.

[Paelos]

Without going into a bunch of detail on specific cases, the ones we've done here in Georgia have had judges that are extremely borrower friendly. They are sick of arguments over values and if you're close, they tell the bank to accept it with no deficiency and move on. Otherwise it's a battle of appraisals, and our lawyers have typically won on ours rather than the banks.

That's not even really the point here though, because you're talking about them violating mortgages on houses that were bought within the last 6 months for those that were hired and relocated in 2012. I can't imagine the deficiencies we'd be talking about would be gigantic if any. Do you?

[CmdrSlack]

Without going into a bunch of detail on specific cases, the ones we've done here in Georgia have had judges that are extremely borrower friendly. They are sick of arguments over values and if you're close, they tell the bank to accept it with no deficiency and move on. Otherwise it's a battle of appraisals, and our lawyers have typically won on ours rather than the banks.

That's not even really the point here though, because you're talking about them violating mortgages on houses that were bought within the last 6 months for those that were hired and relocated in 2012. I can't imagine the deficiencies we'd be talking about would be gigantic if any. Do you?

I thought many of the relocates were earlier than 2012. It doesn't really matter though, in particular if you're looking at the bigger picture. Simply walking has other associated risks, depending on how the state handles ownership of real property (title v. lien theory). I touched on those in my last post.

Also, simply walking has greater penalties for getting a new mortgage, as you noted. 7 years before you can get a mortgage vs. 1-2 years is a big deal. It's also worth noting that Fannie and Freddie have also changed their rules on when you can get a GSE-backed mortgage based on just HOW the property was ditched. BK, Short sale, deed in lieu, and consent foreclosure are all better than a straight default and walk.

[Kail]

You know, the interesting thing is that I'm pretty sure most of us were semi-conscious that this is how the story was likely to end back when Schilling was popping in here to talk about how cool his game was going to be.

I sure as hell wasn't, holy fuck.  I still maintained delusions of setting up my own game company to fulfill my dream of seeing an Inhumanoids MMO if I won the lottery or struck pirate gold or something.  I mean, that's what you need to start up a company, right?  Money?  Then you hire guys who know how to handle business, they hire guys who know how to handle HR, they hire guys who do the actual work, you sit at the top and sign checks and as a result of that privilege you stick your nose in design meetings because you know a thing or two about games.

I didn't realize baseball guy was going to be personally in charge of scheduling and hiring and stock options and shit.  I assumed he was going to be running around looking for investors, maybe, and doing PR interviews, not down in the trenches telling the texture artist what size brush he should be using.  I mean, the idea of a baseball guy thinking that he's going to walk in the door and beat the shit out of the rest of the industry because all they've got is decades of experience, established brands, and tons of cash, while he's got positive thinking on his side, that's fucking nuts.

[Ingmar]

Blame Ayn Rand.

[Paelos]

I thought many of the relocates were earlier than 2012. It doesn't really matter though, in particular if you're looking at the bigger picture. Simply walking has other associated risks, depending on how the state handles ownership of real property (title v. lien theory). I touched on those in my last post.

I think we're getting a bit high level. But yes, it involves getting a lawyer and CPA to help. I don't mean just throwing hands up and going west as "walking away." I was referring to getting over the mental block of walking away.

Anyway, my point was to was to get people to understand it's not the end of the world the lenders would have you believe, but you are correct in that it varies on a state to state basis, and a mortgage held since before the housing bubble (instead of an acquisition that's relatively recent) would be a much more complicated situation.

[CmdrSlack]

I thought many of the relocates were earlier than 2012. It doesn't really matter though, in particular if you're looking at the bigger picture. Simply walking has other associated risks, depending on how the state handles ownership of real property (title v. lien theory). I touched on those in my last post.

I think we're getting a bit high level. But yes, it involves getting a lawyer and CPA to help. I don't mean just throwing hands up and going west as "walking away." I was referring to getting over the mental block of walking away.

Anyway, my point was to was to get people to understand it's not the end of the world the lenders would have you believe, but you are correct in that it varies on a state to state basis, and a mortgage held since before the housing bubble (instead of an acquisition that's relatively recent) would be a much more complicated situation.

Ah, gotcha. I thought you had been saying, "No big, just bail." I get people all the time who think that Illinois == California. I am then forced to realign their expectations rather drastically.

[Numtini]

You know, the interesting thing is that I'm pretty sure most of us were semi-conscious that this is how the story was likely to end back when Schilling was popping in here to talk about how cool his game was going to be.

Did I think this was going to be a successful game? Hell no. I even wrote my state rep about it when Schilling was trying to shake down Mass for tax credits because I figured it would be a flop. But never in my wildest fantasies did I see this coming.

I had it mapped out basically to go the same way Horizons went. Schilling would do exactly what he did, but at some point when the cash burn apocalypse was written in stone, as it must have been a year ago, I expected Schilling to be removed from active control, features to be cut left and right, and it to be rushed out the door as a stripped down cookie cutter MMO lite. That would then flop. EA or SOE or whomever would pick up the company for nothing and move all the jobs to Austin, Vancouver, or wherever and put the game on life support.

At the least, I would have expected the company to follow the law, provide the federally mandated 60 day layoff notices and all that sort of stuff, and wind down the company in a responsible manner.

I think where my scenario went south is I thought there were some investors with equity other than Mr. Baseball who could step in and protect their investment. Apparently there weren't. It was Curt and some loan guarantees from RI. There were apparently no grown ups involved.

Also about the effects this kind of bankruptcy would have on workers. I was in a dot.com back in 2000 that was in a death spiral. The thing about that scenario is that when a company is failing, you have some warning. (Leaving aside the 60 days required by federal law.) You see that things aren't going well. There's a tension in the air. People start leaving and not getting replaced. Maybe there are rounds of cost cutting and you find yourself working on a computer slower than the one at home. You see those warning signs and you start to cut down on expenses. You don't buy a new car. You don't buy that house. You don't take that vacation. You go out to eat less. You start to try to sock money into your bank account. Going back to how they found out their insurance had been discontinued, you don't plan on adding a new child to your family. You also start shopping your resume around and you don't get picky when you get an offer because you don't want to be stuck.

But when a company is blowing thousands on free lunches and making new hires and paying for their move across the country, you assume things are going well, and I'll bet this hit a lot of the workers harder than it would have in a more ordered death spiral.

[Amaron]

Basically, 38 retained Movetrek to list employees houses and pay the mortgages on them until they were sold. Movetrek stopped being paid by 38 Studios several months before the final implosion and,when it was clear that there was going to be no settlement of accounts, advised the owners of the houses that hadn't sold yet that Movetrek was no longer trying to sell them and that the mortgages were once more the responsibility of the owners.

Movetrek didn't buy the houses directly, it just took over mortgage payments while it was retained by 38 Studios. That's why the employees never saw a transfer of the title or a big chunk of cash. I'm guessing that a few of them didn't know that the arrangement was structured like that and just assumed that Movetrek had been paid upfront for services rather than on a retained basis.

That still doesn't make any sense.  Until you sign over the title to someone else you're not going to suddenly forget you own a fucking house.  Same thing for the loans.  The more I read the only thing I can imagine is something like this:

1) Probably these people signed a contract where everything was transferred and their loans were paid.
2) The contract had a stipulation that they (the employee not 38 studios) had to pay X per month until the house sold.
3) 38 studios pays Movetrek for them every month.
4) Their bank allowed them to take on a bunch of new debt because they had been told the old debt was now 38 studios.

Somewhere in there some bullshit happened.  I can believe these people were slightly negligent with contracts or whatever. What I find weird is that their new bank just gave them a new normal interest mortgage if they were still on the hook for the old house.  There had to be a real ongoing incentive for them to make SURE that those houses sold.

The fact that they even asked if the houses sold tells me they probably knew that they were on the hook if they didn't.  Someone lied to them about it too.  For what purpose?  Simply to ease their minds?  Stupidity before malice or whatever but I'd still like to know what the hell is going on there because it still doesn't make sense.

[Chimpy]

Blame Ayn Rand.

/thread

[UnSub]

Paelos, perhaps you are in a situation where if the company you worked for folded tomorrow without paying you that you could just chalk it up as a learning experience and move on. Not everyone is in that same position, particularly when they've financially committed a lot to moving / staying in one location.

Of course not everyone is in that position. I didn't say that. You cherry picked the part of me talking about workers that had been there for years already as working in a pretty great environment, and applied it to people that just up and moved. It's not the same thing.

I understand that he fucked over people who moved there in 2012. I said as much in the actual post. What I'm commenting on is two fold: One, I don't think after working anywhere for 3 years or more if the job suddenly goes tits up in the last month that it makes it a horrible experience. Two, the people that uproot their families, lives, jobs, and kids to gamble on an unestablished business of any kind better be largely aware that it could explode at any time. It was a huge gamble on their part, as opposed to moving somewhere to work for Coke or Lowes.

38 Studios moved to RI in late 2010 with about 90 employees and folded with about 300 (excluding Big Huge Games) 18 months later (iirc). So the majority of employees were 'new' and there were a lot of relocations.

As you say, I'm sure that a lot of people considered the risks of moving to 38 Studios, but then looked at the salary package and were aware of the RI-backed loan and thought the company was in a good financial position... or at the very least they'd get their MMO out so they'd have another released title on their resume.

Plus I'm not sure it's a great ad for game design as a career that you should behave as if you think the studio is going to be shut down tomorrow. Sensible, perhaps, given history, but not a great lifestyle.

38 Studios behaved appallingly here; if they'd behaved as a 'normal' studio (such as laying people off to reduce their cash burn rate; giving 60 days notice, etc) then I'd concede more about their employees "knowing the risks" they were taking. Instead, people thought they were signing on for a possible roller coaster ride actually found they were strapped onto a time bomb.

[Severian]

WPRI: 38 Studios' spending topped $133M, documents reveal

"38 Studios was hemorrhaging cash - our cash," Saul Kaplan, who was executive director of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation until 2008, told WPRI.com. "The thing that is most amazing to me is their burn rate was about $5 million a month all through 2011, heading into 2012, and it didn't slow down even when they knew they were running out of cash."
...
The documents obtained by WPRI.com also raise new questions about whether 38 Studios executives were overoptimistic about the company's prospects. Their business plan projected the company would take in $109 million in revenue over the course of this year, including $6.5 million a month from April to June; $476,333 a month from July to September; and $19.9 million a month from October on.

The documents don't offer a rationale for those numbers, but 38 Studios executives told a bankruptcy trustee they'd projected "Reckoning" would sell more than the 2 million copies necessary for them to break even on the EA advance and begin earning royalties. Actual sales totaled around 1.3 million copies. "I don't think 2 million was an unreasonable estimate - I thought it would do 2 million to 3 million," Michael Pachter, a game-industry analyst at Wedbush Securities, told WPRI.com. "They may have been counting on an extra $30 million to $40 million of revenue from the game."

Pachter said 38 Studios' efforts to attract additional financing were likely hurt by the disappointing performance of "Star Wars: The Old Republic," a new MMO backed by EA that was released in December. "Star Wars" cost an estimated $200 million to develop but hasn't been as big a hit with subscribers as expected. "I honestly think if 38 Studios had moved to get financing months earlier they would have been fine," Pachter said. "Had they been out in the market in December I think they would have been fine, and I think they probably believed they were fine." He also suggested Rhode Island "should have thrown good money after bad" and kept the company afloat for another month while searching for a buyer.
...
Kaplan, author of "The Business Model Innovation Factory," said the newly released documents suggest 38 Studios needed another $60 million or more to finish "Copernicus" and it's unclear whether that much money could have been found. "I can't imagine a scenario where anyone was going to put that capital in," he said.

[Numtini]

I can understand the insanely optimistic projections for Copernicus, the whole point is build MMO, get moneyhats. But where was the 6.5 a month going to come from April - June? 6.5 million of additional sales of KOA? Magical elves?

I don't know where Pachner thinks they were going to get more investors from even before SWTOR given that the company had apparently never been able to find a single serious one.

[Paelos]

38 Studios behaved appallingly here; if they'd behaved as a 'normal' studio (such as laying people off to reduce their cash burn rate; giving 60 days notice, etc) then I'd concede more about their employees "knowing the risks" they were taking. Instead, people thought they were signing on for a possible roller coaster ride actually found they were strapped onto a time bomb.

Absolutely. The studios violated several ethics and a few staffing laws. Still, this is telling:

The documents don't offer a rationale for those numbers

That's what leads me to put a healthy chunk of blame on the government as well. There was literally nothing in even the rosy projections that indicated this was a good idea.

[Lantyssa]

I don't know where Pachner thinks they were going to get more investors from even before SWTOR given that the company had apparently never been able to find a single serious one.

They found serious ones.  That's why they didn't invest.

[HaemishM]

Just because they don't actually lapse into a coma and die from a foreclosure or bankruptcy doesn't mean it isn't a big problem, one they shouldn't have had to deal with had their employer not been A) completely irrresponsible, and B) hiding A) from their employees to try squeeze a few more months out of them. Sure the problem has a solution, but it is neither ideal nor painless.

What he said. I know good and goddamn well it won't end people's lives. Most hardships everyone goes through doesn't actually ruin their lives permanently forever and ever. That's a great logical argument.

It means fuckall to someone who has to swallow what is a massive goddamn kick in the balls, especially when that kick in the balls didn't occur because of the actions of the kicked, but because of some other dickbag like Schilling. We aren't talking about a LOGICAL thing, we are talking about the EMOTION of someone who feels they are about to lose every-goddamn-thing they have worked so hard for years to attain. Paelos, you should know how hard it is for people having seen it from the outside, enough to know that your comment sounds INCREDIBLY CALLOUS no matter how logical it is. Especially when it's said over the Internet.

[HaemishM]

The documents don't offer a rationale for those numbers

That's what leads me to put a healthy chunk of blame on the government as well. There was literally nothing in even the rosy projections that indicated this was a good idea.

Don't blame the government. Blame specifically the previous governor who greased the political wheels to get the law changed so that 38 could get more money than the law allowed one company to get. The current governor took one look at those projections and went "Seriously? WTF? Where is this money going to come from?"

That article had a quote that really infuriates me:

"If you want to make a high-end MMO you're probably looking at north of $100 million,"

No, you fucking don't. Well, you do if you're a fucking idiot. But that's part of the video game industry's problem as a whole, it's gotten into this Hollywood budget death spiral where people think you HAVE to have these monstrous budgets to get games done. Then someone like Mojang comes along and laughs in your fucking faces. Or even something like the Secret World, which I'm pretty sure did not cost $100 million to make. Or any of the F2P MMO's that are out there making bank now that didn't cost $100 million to make (LotRO, DDO just to name two). Also, the fact that Michael Patcher thought KOA: R should have made 2 or 3 million sales is fucking delusional. I still contend it was an insanely horrible deal for 38 to have signed a contract that required 2 million unit sales to even begin earning royalties.

[IainC]

I still contend it was an insanely horrible deal for 38 to have signed a contract that required 2 million unit sales to even begin earning royalties.

They didn't have a choice. There was no money to finish KoA because Copernicus was soaking up all the cash from 38/BHG. EA paid a $35m advance which let them actually complete the game and in return got 90% of the cash from non-Steam sales. 10% of something is a whole lot better than 100% of fuck all.

[HaemishM]

True enough, just shows that even then they should have fucking known better that 38 wasn't a viable company. If your choice is take a really shit deal because it's the only way to keep the company going (without laying off staff and cutting expenses which was apparently verboten), you have already failed.

[Kageru]

Wasn't the deal that a group of private investors lent 38s the money, and the government guaranteed to pay them a massive amount of money if / when it went sour. I'd look at those guys, because they got an amazing win-win deal, so they're probably friends of the governor and they get to hide in the shadows while pocketing their cash.

Indeed 38S going broke was probably amazingly profitable for them if I remember the numbers.

[Amaron]

Indeed 38S going broke was probably amazingly profitable for them if I remember the numbers.

More profitable than if 38 had just been mildly successful?