38 Studios' Amalur MMO 'Project Copernicus' would have been free-to-play
Details continue to surface regarding "Project Copernicus," the Kingdoms of Amalur MMO that once dominated development at Curt Schilling's now-defunct 38 Studios. We've seen an early trailer of the game and learned that it wasn't any fun to play, but Copernicus' more tangible bullet points, such as its pricing structure, have remained a mystery.
"We were going to be the first triple-A, hundred-million-dollar-plus, free-to-play, micro-transaction-based MMO," Schilling told Boston Magazine. "That was one of our big secrets."
Schilling went on to say that Copernicus' status as a free-to-play MMO would have been the "atom bomb" that "shocked the world," once the game eventually debuted. Copernicus' non-subscription architecture was also one of 38 Studios' strongest selling points during late-stage negotiations with potential investors, according to Schilling, and that talks could have been kept alive were it not for Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee's disparaging public tone.
