Schilling became a legend with Red Sox Nation in 2004 after pitching through an injury complete with a bloody sock during the American League Championship against the New York Yankees. He traded on his star power to build his company, which he renamed 38 Studios LLC, a reference to his Sox jersey number. Schilling retired from baseball in 2009.

The right-handed pitcher has said little to reporters, but has repeatedly taken to Facebook and Twitter to try to rally employees and raise hopes for the company’s future. On Thursday, he tried to rebut Chafee’s repeated claims that the company’s first game was a flop. In a Facebook post, Schilling insisted the game “outperformed’’ the expectations of its publisher, Electronic Arts.

Michael Pachter, a game industry analyst at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles, said he was stunned by the failure of 38 Studios. He said Kingdoms of Amalur sold well and should have provided enough revenue to help the company stay afloat until its major project, Copernicus, was ready for release.

Pachter said the company must have lost control of expenses. “Clearly they spent more than they took in,’’ he said. “That’s just poor planning. What were they thinking?’’

But there was no guarantee that Copernicus, an elaborate online role-playing game set to be released in 2013, would be a big hit. Such “massively multiplayer online’’ games are notoriously costly and difficult to develop. Schilling estimated he might need more than $100 million to complete the game.

In addition to 307 workers in Rhode Island, 38 Studios had 106 employees in Maryland, where it bought the video game company Big Huge Games in 2009.

“It’s an incredible tragedy,’’ said Brett Close, a former 38 Studios chief executive who now works for Frog Design in Austin, Texas. The company’s trouble is a “testament to how difficult it is to create that type of product they were trying to build.’’