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[BattleMonkey]

This is horrendous!

I was holding off on The Secret World until the first big patches would hit, but this news might mean I will never invest in a product that is going to be dead within a year.

Very bad news.

Game will likely continue. They apparently are making more money off the in game cash shop than from subscriptions. The game is pretty much primed to go F2P and it will bring in more players if it does. Cash shop doing that well, then things should be pretty flexible for them.

 

[Shads]

I hope this doesn't affect The Longest Journey/Dreamfall sequel. Whatever happened to The Longest Journey iOS port? I would buy that Day 1 on the iPad.

 

[Bladenic]

Hew is Funcom? LOL

 

[Xater]

I didn't even notice The Secret World was released already.

I didn't even know the game existed until I saw game journos tweet about playing it around release time.

 

[derFeef]

Erling Ellingsen, Communications Manager at Funcom, now facing the Norwegian gaming site gamer.no confirmed that the Norwegian developer today has laid off more employees. He would not specify the exact number of redundancies.

Ellingsen guarantee that the development of both The Secret World, Age of Conan and Anarchy Online will continue and that there are no immediate plans to change The Secret Worlds subscription model.

http://translate.google.com/transla.../articles/2012-08-21-massefyringer-hos-funcom

 

[viralmarketeer]

http://www.gamer.no/artikler/119411/permitteringer-hos-funcom-bekreftet/

http://translate.google.com/transla...r/119411/permitteringer-hos-funcom-bekreftet/

Layoffs confirmed?

 

[Dgott]

A little bird told me that Funcom has laid off around 50-60% of their employees world wide today.

I am sorry to hear that.....It sucks for the employees and I hope they can find work somewhere else very soon, but also sucks because I have no clue what they made.

 

[CecilRousso]

I hope this doesn't affect The Longest Journey/Dreamfall sequel.

What sequel? As far as I know the continuation of Dreamfall is only an idea, not an actual product.

 

[Dreamwriter]

What sequel? As far as I know the continuation of Dreamfall is only an idea, not an actual product.

It's more than just an idea, the game was planned with story written and everything. They were having problems funding it because Dreamfall didn't sell too well, so they had the idea of making it an episodic game, so the first episode would be cheaper to make, and if it did well that would fund the rest. But that didn't work out either.

 

[TimeKillr]

I have friends who work at the MTL studio, I'll try to contact them.

 

[acksman]

All of this is managing and marketing. Look at Rift. Same subscription model yet they are growing again. Part of it has been goo business moves aligning with SyFy giving them cheap TV ad time to a targeted audience.

Funcom just did not market in the US well. It's a shame since its a good game.

 

[djtiesto]

Read this as "Falcom" and my heart skipped a beat... not familiar with who Funcom are but that still sucks for the employees.

 

[Vlodril]

Too bad. And people saying that the secret world is not innovative enough, they obviously haven't played it. I just think that people may say they want innovation but they actually prefer something more familiar. Or the mmo genre is dying out. No idea.

 

[BattleMonkey]

All of this is managing and marketing. Look at Rift. Same subscription model yet they are growing again. Part of it has been goo business moves aligning with SyFy giving them cheap TV ad time to a targeted audience.

Funcom just did not market in the US well. It's a shame since its a good game.

Trion still has only one game and they don't have many subcribers, but they get away with it due to having lowered goals of operation. Funcom took a big his by putting out another big game with Secret World which is risky to do when they already were supporting another MMO that didn't do too well.

I wouldn't be surprised if RIFT will be switching to a F2P system in the near future depending how their expansion does and if GW2 and other big releases continue to peck away at it's already small sub base.

 

[Doffen]

About time. Funcom is a sad chapter in the Nordic videogame industry. The company needs to be shaken up and rebuild.

They also had a huge share drop this month. It went from 9.22 NOK to 3.01 in just a week. But it has jet to hit its all time low, but I expect it will happen soon.

 

[NZNova]

I wonder how many MMO flops will it take for funcom to finally try other genres again.

This. Just build that Dreamfall sequel, guys.

 

[derFeef]

This. Just build that Dreamfall sequel, guys.

I love those games, but they also sold very poorly. Just because you want it does not mean it saves the company (if it needs saving).

 

[sflufan]

The EA Partners Program: Where Developers Go To Die (unless you're Valve and Crytek)

 

[derFeef]

The EA Partners Program: Where Developers Go To Die (unless you're Valve and Crytek)

They are not in the EA partners programme.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

I love Funcom. This makes me sad.

 

[sflufan]

They are not in the EA partners programme.

Someone had better tell them that!

http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20120703-904759.html?mod=crnews

 

[derFeef]

Someone had better tell them that!

http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20120703-904759.html?mod=crnews

Mixed that up then.

 

[BattleMonkey]

The EA Partners Program: Where Developers Go To Die (unless you're Valve and Crytek)

How is this EA's fault?

 

[Perkel]

Damn. They need to kickstart dreamfall.

 

[RPG Wizard]

I love Funcom. This makes me sad.

I concur. I felt that the community outreach with the Advisors of Rubi-Ka system was a great way to get players interested in the game, and the freemium base game of Anarchy Online was a good hundred or so hours spent by my friends and me.

I was hoping that Secret World would start that up, because the game just had the classiest setting and seemed to be a lot of what I was looking for in an MMO.

Man, this sucks.

Funcom may not make the best games, but they've got a wonderful flavor of their own.

 

[evilchicken]

This is some pretty bad news if true. Something big about the industry needs to change. This is far too common.

 

[Doffen]

Damn. They need to kickstart dreamfall.

It’s based in Norway. Games can be founded there up to 1.5 million NOK by NFI (Cultural founding by the State). A project usually gets founded several times, the most common is one time for the development and one time for publishing.

There are thou a few strings attached. The game needs to fulfill several requirements made by NFI. Thats the reason why there’s so many (dull) teaching games created in Norway with huge budgets.

 

[99%]

Funcom released that steaming shitpile of Conan that Wolan was shilling, what a pile of crap that was.

I learned my lesson then.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

Funcom released that steaming shitpile of Conan that Wolan was shilling, what a pile of crap that was.

I learned my lesson then.

Yeah, maybe at launch... but Age of Conan is my favorite game ever, now. Still playing and will do so until they tear down the servers. New expansion coming end of this year, WOOT!

 

[derFeef]

Yeah, maybe at launch... but Age of Conan is my favorite game ever, now. Still playing and will do so until they tear down the servers. New expansion coming end of this year, WOOT!

damn those Aztecs! Or Mayas?

 

[Talon]

Welp, add another company to the MMO kill list.

 

[soultron]

Best of luck to all those affected. The Secret World looks like an awesome game with fresh ideas. :c

 

[Lime]

It’s based in Norway. Games can be founded there up to 1.5 million NOK by NFI (Cultural founding by the State). A project usually gets founded several times, the most common is one time for the development and one time for publishing.

There are thou a few strings attached. The game needs to fulfill several requirements made by NFI. Thats the reason why there’s so many (dull) teaching games created in Norway with huge budgets.

1.5 mill NOK is way too small of an amount to develop anything remotely similar to the technical quality of TLJ and Dreamfall. It's the same across the whole of Scandinavian game industry funding: govermnent support is possible, but the amount is way too small to do anything commercial (which is fine by me, as the programmes are aiming for cultural and educational products, rather than mainstream video game # 37) just explaining.

 

[derFeef]

Why did so many developers stick to the sub model? Start making some Guild Wars 1 style co-op RPGs. Even Cryptic seems to have finally figured this out. Going for the WoW model of EQ with the overworld ignored for instances just doesn't work for sub games. People will pay for EVE, they will not pay for WoW-lite unless its WoW or it's F2P.

I probably would have bought this game if it was just a co-op RPG.

That's what TSW exactly is NOT.

 

[dreamfall]

Well, hell. Best of luck to all those affected, The Secret World really does look like a very promising, atmospheric MMO. But like everyone here, I do hope they make the Dreamfall chapters someday...

 

[99%]

Yeah, maybe at launch... but Age of Conan is my favorite game ever, now. Still playing and will do so until they tear down the servers. New expansion coming end of this year, WOOT!

First 20 levels were ok, but beyond that...

Not to mention the clusterfuck with their ATI support.

 

[Htown]

Really? I was under the impression that it was mostly a lot of questlines you get funneled into, with little player interaction required.

Based on the free weekend, that's not true at all.

But I did get that idea from listening to Jeff Gerstmann, who also made Guild Wars 2 sound both pedestrian and not any different from any other recent MMO... Which, having played it, I know is not the case.

Here's the thing you have to learn about Jeff Gerstmann: Cool guy, funny, absolutely terrible opinions on games.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

From what i played of the beta it's a vastly better game than shitty star wars.

 

[legacyzero]

So Secret World f2p soon?

I'd hit that.

That sucks for them though.. Secret World looks so awesome. I'm just not into monthly charged MMO's, especially with my backlog =/

 

[BattleMonkey]

I'd hit that.

That sucks for them though.. Secret World looks so awesome. I'm just not into monthly charged MMO's, especially with my backlog =/

Seeing as I heard from a friend in the know, that they are making more money off of the games cash shop than the subs, I think F2P would probably end up helping them greatly. Game didn't meet sales expectations and really they are not going to improve at this point especially with the negative press. Going F2P could completely turn it around for the better.

 

[bj00rn_]

**** MMOs..

 

[indigo-cyclops]

So is this rumor or what?

 

[RaffAO]

The curse of the tone-deaf WoW clone industry.

 

[indigo-cyclops]

The curse of the tone-deaf WoW clone industry.

Not quite a clone, but at least you tried.

 

[Htown]

So here's the problem with most MMOs.

They need a giant player base to be profitable, so they try to make the game super accessible.

This usually means, however, that they make sure 95-99% of the game is easily solo-able.

Once you do that, you lose the justification for the monthly fee, since most players are essentially just playing a single player game.

If you look at the subscription MMOs that actually succeed, other than WoW (which I haven't played in a while and is a bit of a special case), they all are very multiplayer focused. EVE is entirely about the massively multiplayer interactions in their universe, for example.

This is why, despite the fact that Funcom have made a really good game, I don't think it's going to survive long as a subscription service. Like The Old Republic, it's very story (aka single player) focused.

 

[etiolate]

I enjoyed what I played of The Secret World despite its shortcomings in certain areas. I think they should have gone with a different pricing model though.

 

[Kifimbo]

So is this rumor or what?

Confirmed, but we don't know how many people.

"As we announced in the stock notice that went out on August 10th, Funcom is in the process of reducing operational costs and this process includes temporary layoffs as well as other initiatives," reads a statement from the company. "As we are currently in the middle of this process we can not provide any further comment at the present time. Rest assured however that we have long-term plans for the company and that we remain fully committed to all of our games."

http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/8/21/3258549/layoffs-come-to-the-secret-world-developer-funcom

 

[antitrop]

I wonder how many MMO flops will it take for funcom to finally try other genres again.

Just wait until The Elder Scrolls Online. Maybe that will wake people up that they should just stop trying.

 

[CaLe]

I have a Lifetime for The Secret World, and I couldn't be happier about that game. It's truly awesome, I sincerely hope this doesn't mean the game will go down.

The atmosphere, voice acting, story... Top notch.

The music is really good too.

 

[Victrix]

Honestly surprised they've gone this long after the trainwreck that was AoC.

Not happy to see anyone lose their job, but Funcom lost my business and my trust after that mess.