While it’s still business as usual as far as 38 Studios and Big Huge Games are concerned — they did just publish the second part of a community Q&A with Ken Rolston — it may be necessary to append a “for now” to that observation.

First, though, a word of warning: some of the facts being reported alongside news of 38 Studios’ financial troubles seem muddled and contradictory.

What’s beyond question, I think, is that 38 Studios is in some kind of financial trouble. The studio was given a loan by the state of Rhode Island in the amount of at least $50 million (or perhaps $75 million, which actually seems to be the more correct figure). The granting of this loan was, evidently, one of the main reasons behind 38’s move to Rhode Island, and the terms of the loan agreement included a stipulation that the company would have to fill 450 full-time positions to receive the full amount of the loan.

Now, 38 Studios’ first major game release, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning sold modestly, with over 400,000 physical copies purchased in the US. My back-of-a-napkin math — which assumes that the game’s digital sales reflected the typical physical-to-digital sales ratio that EA has reported in the past (60:40), and which also assumes that the game sold some number of copies overseas — tells me that the game probably sold not more than 700,000 copies in total.

For a new fantasy IP, that’s not actually that bad; the much-celebrated Dark Souls (itself a technically new IP, but meant as a spiritual sequel to an earlier game) sold a bit over one million copies, for example. It’s also not stellar performance; Dragon Age: Origins sold north of two million copies. “Middling” is a very good word to use to describe Reckoning’s sales.

And if we make another assumption based on the sales figures from Mass Effect 3 — $200 million in total sales, about 3 million copies moved — then we can assume that Reckoning’s sales were in the range of $50 million (maybe a little less). Which, again, is a reasonable figure; EA did cite Reckoning as one of their strong-selling properties in their latest quarterly results.

But $50 million is also a lot less than the $75 million loan given to 38 Studios, and 38 Studios likely didn’t see a large chunk of that figure because of their arrangement with EA. The exact terms of the agreement they have with EA regarding Reckoning is unknown — one doubts that it’s quite as bad an agreement as Obsidian had with Bethesda for Fallout: New Vegas — but it’s safe to assume that 38 Studios saw, at best, only a smallish portion of the total sales of Reckoning flow back into its coffers.

Now, to be fair, the loan was probably meant to finance the development of Copernicus, the currently-still-upcoming MMORPG set in the Amalur universe. So it would make sense that 38 Studios wasn’t necessarily expecting to be able to pay it back solely on the success of Reckoning. Even so, the company had been paying back the loan bit by bit, and they missed the latest $1.125 million dollar payment (or was it a $1.25 million dollar payment?). This, technically, meant that they defaulted on the loan.

38 Studios isn’t dead yet, though; that’s a point that I think needs to be stressed. And as yet, there’s been no work that work on Copernicus has stopped, or that anyone has been let go by the company. That’s not to say that 38 Studios is in great shape; they aren’t, and word is they are meeting with the Economic Development Corporation of Rhode Island to address the matter and figure out a way to protect Rhode Island’s investment…and the jobs of several hundred of its people.

I, for one, hope that something can be done. Reckoning, from a narrative perspective, isn’t necessarily the strongest RPG I’ve ever encountered, nor is it the most graphically stunning game of 2012…but the game overall is solid and, really, quite excellent. More importantly, it’s fun; the world is lush and invites exploration, the combat is still the best I’ve come across in a PC RPG, and there’s a lot of promise in the millennium-spanning story of Amalur that I think can — and should — be explored in DLC and successive games. And the philosophical premise of the game, playing as it did with themes of rigid determinism and free will, was tasty, tasty mind candy.

The series has had a mediocre start, but I think that it could be a serious contender in the RPG space…if its developer(s) survive(s) long enough for it to have a chance.