Good news for the State of Rhode Island, 38 Studios has cut a check to the state and it cleared. Bad news is that it still hasn’t paid its employees yet. Worse news is that the state has no intention of giving the studio any additional funding so it is going to need funding from an outside source in order to make it till the June 20th, 2013 launch of the MMO project that the studio has been working on called Project Copernicus.

The developer has released what can be best described as a “sizzle reel” showing of the MMO game known as Project Copernicus. What is interesting is that Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee says that Project Copernicus will launch in June of 2013.

Not that we are judging here, but June 20th of 2013 is a long way off and in order to make that deadline, you are going to need to pay developers and in order to pay developers you are going to need money. Right not 38 Studios does not have the money to meet payroll and these folks are not going to work for free on this till June 20th of 2013 hoping that everything comes together.

Sources we have spoken will say that it will be difficult to get the kind of funding in place that it is necessary to finish the game by June of 2013, but it is possible. We suspect however with such a compressed time frame it could be much more difficult than leaders at 38 Studios think, but we will just have to wait and see how this saga unfolds.