38 Studios and Big Huge Games, the developers of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, have closed their doors, laying off all employees. 38 Studios itself had been subsisting on $75 million in development aid loans from the state of Rhode Island, and was late in paying back the first installment. According to Rhode Island's governor, the game would have to sell an additional 3 million copies simply to break even.
Reckoning's lead designer has stated that the next planned patch for the game will never be released.
With all this news, it seems almost certain that development on Reckoning is done for good, and its companion MMORPG, "Project Copernicus", may never see the light of day. Fantasy writer RA Salvatore, who came up with much of the back story for both Amalur games, states that Copernicus was far along in its development, but doubts it will ever be published.
UPDATE:
EA games has declined to acquire the IP rights to the Amalur games in development. Those rights are now owned by the state of Rhode Island [1].
A previous version of this blog post stated that the loan was only $1 million. That was the size of the late payment only [2].