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Funcom Restructuring
fallenlords
Member UncommonPosts: 683
Seems Funcom is in the process of restructuring, a very postive slant put on this latest annoucement from them.
This time I am not going to say much. Apart from anybody that has been through a 'restructuring' within a company before will know what a wonderul postive experience it happens to be. All those glass half full type people a 'restructuring' doesn't happen unless there are signficant problems within a company. Now the blurb they put out might be all sweetness and light, but generally watch this space because it's an indicator of financial difficulty.
Comments
TSW sitting at 270K sold. 400% activity increase from the 50K players they were down to = about 200K players steady for now. they are going to be shutting down many offices and just have one or two offices open.
EDIT: boy, that initial prediction from Funcom was so correct. this game won't sell 500K by next july.
"This is not a game to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown with great force"
What I read is anything that is the new lego project is getting funded. The other 3 games will have a centralized dev team despite a 70% increase in tsw box sales.
I been through 2 restructurings. That is company speak for we in deep, and we got to cut this this and that all the deadwoord must go. I always found myself on the project that they decided needed to be axed.
So when I read the bs of were making great money with TSW but were going to restructure the core dev team around aoc, ao and tsw. That makes you go hmmm.
I feel bad for the folks who are fixing to loose their jobs, you know its going to happen and happen soon.
yea, they will eventually make cuts till there's about 30 people working on all 3 MMO's combined. they may throw a hail marry and drop TSW's box price as well. their cash shop is just not appealing though.
lame outfits, character bounbnd, high prices.
They released the game thinking that enough people would be suckered into buying it and subbing for a few months (and some even getting lifetime subs lol @ people who did) then when it all dies down they could switch to F2P to keep making money. This was a poor strategy and hopefully a lesson that other MMO devs don't take lightly.
Don't release a sub-based MMO of sub-par quality without being able to support it in a big way.
Even the CEO resigned when the game came out because he knew it would bomb. Oh yeah, he also decided to do a little insider trading because he knew it would bomb and got caught...go figure. Funcom has a history of repeating mistakes over and over. It really does not surprise me that they are probably going under or will be a skeleton crew for the games they currently have released. Good luck with those monthly issues in the future. Not that they had much content anyways most of the time, but yeah.
Heh TSW managed to destroy Funcom, smth that AoC and AO coudnt do.
Man TSW really is a bad game...
TSW is actually a gem. A really special and really good game that I and many others love to spend time in.
What makes this game special, is that its different. And different might mean that everyone that "asks for a new kinda game but doesnt really mean it" will probably dislike it because its harder and more challenging than their normal "kill 10 rats quests game."
Try it out, spend some time in TSW and I am sure you and everybode will like it. But it takes a little time and adjustment because its different. So give it some hours, read and listen to quests, watch the videos, enjoy the lore and special setting.
Then you might love the game just as me.
Its sad to hear that Funcom needs another round of restructuring/layoffs, but they have to make a profit.
Its a shame not more gamers play and support a company like funcom that has made many very good games!
And yes I have spent tons of time in AO and AoC as well, and loved them not because of the bugs but because of the humor, setting, lore and to not forget, the courage to make a game that is different...
I suggest anyone interested go check out the Q3 financial report FC releasedsoon after TSW went live, for the straight info.
To not put too fine a point on it, TSW all put crashed FC and for good.
They reported a $35 mil write-down on the value of TSW and announced 50% layoffs for the entire company. They also went on to say, FC was nowhere near cashflow postivie and would not be until at least mid 2013.
Additionally, they specifically cited the lack of sales of TSW and the inability to recoup costs as the main difficulty. Also, they announced at the same time that would be making games "much more limited in scope", i.e. no more MMOs.
And if all of that were not enough, FC has hired two outside firms (mergers and acquisition specialists) to get FC ready for sale. (That bit is on the investors page at FC).
So, all in all it is not looking good for FC, and even they know they can not survive as a company in the long term, which is why they are trying to find a buyer.
Sorry, but if you read the last message they sent out to the stock market, you will notice that they belive they are going to be profitable after this round of layoffs/restructuring...
I have read the latest release and I haven't seen that much tap dancing since EA and TOR. As someone else noted, what was not said was frankly more interesting.
And even what is there is weak... "We believe... blah blah blah." So when they are not actually profitable and do not reach their goals in 3-6 months, no one can't straight out accuse them of lying. Which is sometimes illegal, in regards to official financial releases.
What has not changed is they are still apparently paying the M+A guys and are still looking for a buyer. And have not found one yet, as far as we know.
And none of that is anything "happy companies" do.
Some day I'm going to put a sword through your eye and out the back of your skull!
Arya Stark
Because Funcom is a terrible company that consistantly produces poor products that are not ready for launch, buggy as hell,imbalanced as hell and have very little content so alot of people just want them to be put down already.
Yet many people play and enjoy Funcom's product's.
Sorry,but to me it's just trashing a company just beacause.Pretty lame if you ask me.
Oh and to add,if you actually played TSW and gave it a chance it's hardly a poor product,get real.
Some day I'm going to put a sword through your eye and out the back of your skull!
Arya Stark
That really is the irony in all this. TSW actually was the most playable and fun game of the three at launch, and it seems to be the one getting blamed for killing funcom. Also, the devs were very deliberate and honest about TSW... stark contrast to AOC.
AOC is the game that killed Funcom.... it just left it with enough breath to pop out another game before dying. If TSW had been launched 5 years ago instead of AOC, things might be different for Funcom. Funcom´s reputation because of AOC is what killed box sales for TSW.... NOBODY, myself included, would never touch a funcom game at launch after being through AOC´s launch.
TSW is the best MMORPG i have played. Hands down, beat the shit out of GW2 when i tried to get into it. I've enjoyed my time there much more than ive ever gotten with WoW. SWTOR cannot hold a candle even in its best aspect.
TSW is a good game, People just get hard ons when they watch companies fail. Thus meny people wont buy TSW even though its Among the best if not THE best MMO currently on the market.
Because i can.
I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out.
Logic every gamers worst enemy.
I like the game, but it has some seriously large problems as a result of crappy programmers.
Stuff like the myriad of chat bugs that plague the game to this day. (channels disappear or get added randomly when zoning, sometimes you have channels that repeat everything said in them 2 to 5 times at once, things like replying to whispers and the current active channel not always working as expected resulting in whispers going to general chat or group chat going to some other channel).
You make me like charity
I'm of the opinion that FC would be better off positioning as a high-end Indie rather than a triple-A developer. They don't seem to have the marketing muscle to sell millions of boxes, which implies that when they overspend on production they can't break even at release.
With a more realistic approach, I think they'd do fine financially.
Really, i've seen none of those bugs happen to me. The only one i've ever got and i havent seen it for 2 patches. Is being unable to connect to the Community server so im unable to chat with anyone. but as i said i havent seen that but since November.
Because i can.
I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out.
Logic every gamers worst enemy.
I was getting them as of a few weeks ago when I picked it back up, and pretty frequently as well.
You make me like charity
As for the bugs, I too have recently experienced the chat issues .. the whole chat system is archaic.
Because i can.
I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out.
Logic every gamers worst enemy.
I may have an empty live where for the last 10 years all i do is pick up a MMO free or P2P play it for a week or two and then move on to the next. I may have played around 150+ MMOS (this is not a wild guess this is a fact).
And if i were to make a top 10... AoC would be somewhere between 5-10, Ao in the top 5 and TSW would probbably be #1 .
I might have different taste then the avarage gamer (read go kill 10 rats wow clones) But this is the way it is.
Ao have set standards for other MMOs and even years after coming back i cant get over how ridiculouslly genius that game is for a number nerd like me with all the different skills and implants over equiping.
AoC had a very engaging combat and its mature setting was a freash change from all the colorful elves games around. (to this day i still cant tell how any self respecting adults can paly games like flyff or even Wow with taurens,trolls and mohawk skeletons. dafaq)
As far as TSW goes there is no other MMO that comes miles close to how ridiculouslly awesome that game is in terms of story telling and atmosphere.
Atmosphere over all is a big part of all 3 mentioned games and it is what makes those games stand out so much to me. Be it Ao cyber punk setting , AoCs blood and sex or TSW mistery.
For me Games like tera are the justin bieber of MMOs. I think there is something terribly wrong with people in the world we live in and what they like. But then again i might just be a wirdo.
No, you are not a wirdo, I feel just the same as you. Im currently subbed to AoC and member of TSW, and I love them both. I really hope Funcom can survive as an independent developer and continiue to make game. Im a optimist so I wont read too much onto this press release. Instead im gonna log into TSW and spend some money in the cash shop and try to support them as best I can..
I'd rearange that list a bit, but I'm definitivly also a weirdo.
For me AO is the best game of all time. I'm still subbed to it on both my accounts. All other games after have felt shallow in skill/char customization. And why do all other games shy off something as simple as a timed spawn with awsome sunglasses
I also think tarasque is some of the best engame content ever the way it was around 2001-2004 with a community activly fighting over it. I still don't have the damn gaily painted hood on my NT though!
TSW is in the high 5s, maybe even 2 or 3. It's my main game now. I get some of the complexity feeling with the wheel and the story/atmosphere has kept me and my wife entertained since closed beta. We both have life time subs here.
AoC is somewhere in the lower top 10. I'm a bit mad at Gaute for waisting all that money remaking tortage 10-15 times and thus borking the launch (although I personally never had any problems). I actually had to check, and yes, both me and my wife have active subs here still. It's the time constraint and the awsomeness of TSW that keeps us from it. We both have 8-12 level 80s
Note that these rankings are of all games not just MMOs.
If I was to rank only MMOs:
1. AO
2. TSW
3. EVE Online.
4. Age of Wushu (even with only a week of playing time)
5. AoC
Anyway. I hope that they survive.. And they have survived for quite some time. The MMOs are not their only projects either.
i played every AAA mmo.. and for me is TSW nr 1 at this time (i do end game now)
but its true there are some problems.. maybe with programers.. it looks like they shifted to Lego.. designers for new issues are ok.. but game have some problems and fixing is not so fast as can be in bigger teams.. but still everything is not realy gamebreaking (except pvp joining) this is major issue of TSW... game needs huge recreation of pvp.. maybe one or two issues pvp oriented only can help... but funcom dosnt anonced something like this