On Sunday, we covered the news that multiplayer RPG Eden Falling had resurfaced with new development updates and and a major investment into developer Razor Edge Games. The studio posted a press release announcing that it had “secured over $1.3M over five years from the Arizona Commerce Department via tax incentives and credits for new employee hires in the state,” along with “further support from The City of Gilbert.”
But last night, we were contacted by a representative from the Arizona Commerce Authority (not “department”) with a request to amend our article; she disputed that the state organization had funded the studio and the game. Naturally, we reached out to everyone involved to try to sort out the misunderstanding; it’d be a bit baffling to be that confused over the source of $1.3M, after all.
This morning, Razor Edge Games’ Michael Weiser contacted us to clarify that the funding isn’t as direct as the press release issued to media made it sound.
“According to my state of Arizona Rep, the article prepared and sent out by our external marketing company was somewhat misleading,” he told us. “In truth, we have partnered with the state and local government to receive the amount quoted but as a tax incentive relief over a period of 5 years, and it is applied based on people we hire to work in in the studio. We have about 160 current team members who currently work remotely, of which we plan to have about 40 relocate to Gilbert AZ to work in the studio and bring on as many as the others full-time over a period of 5 years.”
The (new) press release is hosted on the game’s official site.
