Epic opening new studio with Kingdoms of Amalur devs

Epic Games is planning to open a new studio in Baltimore staffed predominantly by former Big Huge Games employees.

Big Huge Games is the Kingdoms of Amalur dev that was closed due to financial problems parent company 38 Studios had.

Epic president Mike Capps explained the deal in a blog post. He said the ex-BHG "leadership team" contacted Epic to tell them they wanted to make a new studio and, if possible, have their first game be an Epic-owned IP.

At the same time, Epic was thinking about opening a new studio, but needed an abundance of proven talent to miraculously appear to make it work.

It was a perfect match.

"It'll take a while to find space, set up desks and PCs, purchase sufficient Nerf weaponry and Dr. Pepper, etc. But some of these folks have been going too long without a paycheck to wait for that. So, as soon as we can, we're going to try to get people working down here at Epic headquarters in Cary, NC as contractors," wrote Capps.

"There's a million things to work out. How many of the team can we hire? What will it be called? What will they be working on? We don't know all the answers yet. Please give us some time to figure it out; we hope to have more to share soon.

"The way we see it," he added, "there's been a big storm in Baltimore, and we're taking in a few of the refugees - as are the awesome folks at Zynga East, Zenimax Online, and other southeastern studios. Epic's in a situation where we can do this, and it very clearly fits with our company values, so we're going to give it a whirl."