The Top 3 MMORPG Scandals That I Still Can't Believe Actually Happened

When you cover MMORPGs for a while, you come across some bizarre news sometimes. While gaming in general always has its fair share of scams and wild occurrences, sometimes the news is downright scandalous. After all these years, there's still a few of them that I think about occasionally. Granted, one of the below items is pretty recent, but the other two were many years ago, but they're still incredibly interesting to me. Sometimes we even get new news on some of them even though all the players in each story have moved on years ago.

That said, I want to be clear about what is "interesting" here. Some of these stories involve employees losing their jobs and, in one, taxpayers being left picking up the tab. The fallout of each of these isn't the interesting part. It's the sad part. People were, sometimes, hurt in some way and that's not something I take lightly. The "interesting" part of these scandals is more the drama behind the scenes, and the "how" and "why" they happened.

For brevity's sake, I'll be covering these at a higher level. If you're interested in all the nitty-gritty details, I'd encourage you to research them a bit. They are all somewhat fascinating for different reasons.

So, in no particular order, here we go.

Funcom's Insider Trading Scandal As The Secret World Launches

I have great personal love for The Secret World. Earlier this week I wrote a piece detailing why the MMORPG should get (another?) remake and why I don't think it ever would. I should also take a moment right off the bat here to call out that this scandal isn't representative of today's Funcom. The players we'll discuss below have long since left the company, paid fines, and even served jail time in some cases.

Back on July 3rd, 2012, Funcom launched its conspiracy-filled MMO The Secret World. However, the day before launch saw interesting news of its own. The then-CEO of the company, Trond Arne Aas, stepped down. Ok, weird to step down the day before the MMO releases, but it could happen. Aas was set to remain as an advisor to the board and chief strategy officer.

Later that year, Aas and other ex-Funcom staff became the subject of an insider trading investigation. While they were also investigated for market manipulation, all involved escaped that charge at trial. You see, stepping down as CEO allowed Aas to sell off his stock in the company, which he and others did. Just days after The Secret World launched, the company announced it had only sold 200K copies when it had expectations in the millions. The company stock slid from over $17 a share prior to launch to just a shade over $2 a share come September.

Aas and others were initially found guilty of insider trading and sentenced to various fines and jail time with Aas himself being sentenced to 11 months and a fine of over $750K USD at today's conversion rate. Aas vowed to appeal the ruling.

It was wild at the time seeing an MMORPG's offices closed while officials investigated and the company's stock trading was even suspended temporarily.

Today, Funcom is still around and so is The Secret World in the form of F2P MMO Secret World Legends. The company has had tons of leadership changes since then and Dune: Awakening is their next big release. Hopefully no one resigns the day before its launch.

The Day Before (Literally the Whole Thing)

This one is still rather fresh, comparatively speaking. FNTASTIC originally announced The Day Before back in 2021 and it was billed as a zombie survival MMO. The team promised an expansive post-apocalyptic world and players were tasked with rebuilding civilization. The usual hype from the devs came next with the team claiming the game was going to revitalize the genre with many new elements. Players could expect to get their hands on the game in June 2022.

Obviously, that date didn't hold. About 1 month prior to launch, The Day Before was delayed so the game could be moved to Unreal Engine 5. The new launch date was slated for March 2023. All this time, the game continued to hype itself and players made the game the most wishlisted game on Steam.

An engine upgrade delay wasn't, by itself, a huge red flag, but it certainly drew concerns. From there, though, things just seemed to spiral. FNTASTIC apparently expected "volunteers" to help them create the game. After the backlash, the team tried to "clarify" that volunteers didn't necessarily mean "unpaid" despite the literal definition of the word "volunteer."

This would begin a trend of the company saying bizarre things, having to "clarify" them, and showing off some bizarre "features" in the game. The sauna trailer out of nowhere was one of my personal favorites.

Through the years that followed, The Day Before saw its game pulled from Steam for a time over a trademark dispute, delayed again and again, the team's multiple attempts to "sell" other apps and games via streams teased as showing off The Day Before, and weird video "preview" drops of features like sports cars.

That's literally the "short" version. You can check out the entire sordid history in our archives.

Finally we arrived at launch in December of 2023. It went about as well as you would expect for a game that already had numerous "scam" accusations leveled against it. What was the most surprising, though, was how FAST it all went down. The game was jank, it wasn't anywhere near being the "MMO" we were promised, as it ended up being an extraction shooter, and literally 4 days after launch, FNTASTIC announced it was closing down and the game was going away. Refunds were eventually given, but FNTASTIC still continued to cite a "hate campaign" as the reason for their failure, not, you know, the mess of a product they released. They had tried this exact "blame the media" tactic during development, too, and even promised to "not hold a grudge" as launch neared.

Shockingly, none of this was enough to stop the company from assembling another crew to work on new projects and they even attempted a Kickstarter for one, if you can believe that.

Insane.

38 Studios and Project Copernicus

I finish today with a scandal that continues to intrigue me to this day.

In 2006, Green Monster Games was founded in Massachusetts. Curt Schilling, a Major League Baseball player who has come just shy of being inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame a number of times, opened the studio with ambitions on creating a fantasy universe with the talents of Todd McFarlane and acclaimed fantasy writer R.A. Salvatore. On this front, Schilling actually succeed initially. Single-player game Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning released in 2012 after the company acquired Big Huge Games in 2009.

That title received decent critical reception and pretty nice sales for a new IP with 1.3 million units being sold by 2012. Expectations on sales weren't met, though. Apparently, since 38 Studios (the new name after multiple acquisitions) had always envisioned Amalur as an MMORPG universe and projects along those lines were already moving, the company needed more cash since the profits from the game mostly went towards paying back a loan EA gave the company during development.

Schilling relocated 38 Studios to Rhode Island since the state was offering attractive rates and tax breaks to entice video game development houses to move into the state. To make things even more difficult to say no to, Rhode Island agreed to give 38 Studios a $75 million loan for their development project. When a state gives out loans, that cash comes from taxpayers. Remember that, it'll be important later. What also becomes ironic later is that a politician, Lincoln Chafee, was very vocally opposed to this loan. They later became Governor and had to deal with the upcoming fallout.

The short version of events is as follows: the studio continued work on "Project Copernicus," the Amalur MMO, some employees expressed concerns regarding the company's leverage, and then the company missed its scheduled $1.1 million loan payment in May of 2012. This touched off a firestorm and Governor Chafee was very loud about the situation. It was even reported at the time that Schilling attempted to sell Project Copernicus to then Sony Online Entertainment head John Smedley. He, reportedly, declined given the difficult MMO market at the time.

A sequel to Kingdoms of Amalur lost its publisher over the news and the company did end up making their missed loan payment at the expense of employee salaries. Those employees were then laid off on May 24th, mainly via email, as the company slid (baseball pun intended) into bankruptcy owing over $150 million to a multitude of creditors, the largest of which was Rhode Island's Economic Development Corporation.

Things moved very quickly from here on out. The company actually filed for bankruptcy just weeks later. Investigations kicked off on numerous fronts. Employees lost their jobs and benefits, many lost their 401Ks, and the state even had to step in to assist many employees with unemployment benefits. While the gaming development community did rally to find staff jobs as fast as possible, obviously everyone wasn't "made whole."

Schilling and others were individually sued by multiple entities including the state. That suit was later settled, but the taxpayers of Rhode Island were still on the hook for over $38 million of the loan. Project Copernicus and other assets were auctioned off (for far less than you would think) and some of them still turn up from time to time in gaming news. Hell, just last year I wrote about a dev who apparently has a hard drive of all the assets...but they can't open it due to not having the password.

If you want the entire story in extreme details, Bloomberg has an amazing article as did the NY Times from back then that you should check out.

Honestly, there's probably about a dozen other stories I could have included here, but I wanted to avoid the "scandal" that comes with lawsuits, allegations of mistreatment of employees, or anything along those lines. These are just some of the stories I can't believe were actually real as I reported on them in real time for various outlets over the years.

Do you have any that you remember that you'd like to share with me?