The Secret World’s conversion to buy-to-play last year boosted player activity by more than 400% and over 70,000 additional units have been sold over the last four weeks according to a recent Funcom press release. Unfortunately, the increased activity and sales were not enough to keep Funcom from undergoing more restructuring that will likely result in more layoffs through office closures and consolidations. Details about the consolidations will be available once the process has been completed.

Funcom stated in the release that the restructuring will allow a streamlining of its development and put the company in a better position to focus on its current titles that include Age of Conan: Unchained, Anarchy Online, The Secret World, and the upcoming LEGO Minifigures MMOG.

Funcom announced restructuring plans following the launch of The Secret World last year with "temporary" layoffs that affected roughly half of its global workforce. As always, our best wishes go out to those that may be affected by the restructuring.

Source: Funcom Investor Release


FUNCOM ANNOUNCES RESTRUCTURING OF THE COMPANY



As part of the ongoing review of strategic options announced on 22 October 2012, Funcom has initiated a process of restructuring the Company around its core products and technology. This includes the consolidation of offices and teams around the world as well as the streamlining of internal processes. By taking advantage of the Company’s industry-leading proprietary technology, the new organization will be better equipped to realize the strategy of building smaller high quality MMO games such as the upcoming ‘LEGO Minifigures’ game which is currently in development by the highly experienced team at the Company’s Oslo studio.

The restructured organization will continue to focus strongly on its existing, successful MMO games; ‘Age of Conan’, ‘Anarchy Online’ and ‘The Secret World’. Through providing more organizational focus and strengthening the competence of a joint central team that will continue to operate and enhance these games, the Company will work towards increasing their profitability and continue to provide exciting experiences for existing, returning and new players of these online worlds.

The Company is especially pleased with the successful re-launch of ‘The Secret World’, after switching to a buy-to-play business model in December 2012. Activity levels in the game have increased by over 400% as original players have returned joined by thousands of new players. After its re-launch, ‘The Secret World’ has sold more than 70,000 units in the last four weeks alone, which is close to 30 percent increase in total sales. The Company will continue to build on this initial success in the months to come.

“We are building the basis of a very sustainable business” says Ole Schreiner, CEO of Funcom.“With a restructured organization, we will have a joint team of the best-of-the-best working together to expand our existing online worlds and to create new, exciting and memorable online experiences such as our upcoming ‘LEGO Minifigures’ game.”

The restructuring of the Company will involve cost reductions through the closure and the consolidation of offices with the goal of creating a stronger unified organization that can take full advantage of the exciting opportunities that face the games industry as it steps into 2013 and beyond.

Details on the results of the restructuring will be made available once the process is complete.

Any enquiries may be addressed to [email protected].

Badhoevedorp, The Netherlands, 10 January 2013

Funcom N.V.

This information is subject of the disclosure requirements acc. to §5-12 of vphl (Norwegian Securities Trading Act).


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Last Updated: Mar 14, 2016

About The Author

Stacy "Martuk" Jones was a long-time news editor and community manager for many of our previous game sites, such as Age of Conan. Stacy has since moved on to become a masked super hero, battling demons in another dimension.

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