Funcom has announced that it has secured a $6.4M private investment

[Jtbrig7390]

http://www.mmorpg.com/newsroom.cfm/loadNews/39918

Funcom has announced that it has secured a $6.4M private investment in the company and that, combined with other debt conversion initiatives, its equity has improved from -$10M to +4M. The move gives the company better financial stability and footing to continue to develop both small and large titles including Conan Exiles, currently scheduled to hit beta testing this summer.

“This investment is a major turning point for the company,” said Funcom CEO Rui Casais. “Funcom has been making great games for more than twenty-three years, but it is no secret that the company has had a strained financial situation in recent years that made it challenging to fully realize our new strategy and get back on the right track. This investment allows us to finally do that.”

I don't know much about business but how is $6.4mil going to help a gaming company get back on its feat? Hell that's a small amount for some indie games. I can't really see them developing anything with it that's worth noting or investing really.

But like I said I don't know much about business soo.

If it helps them that's good tho, I rather not see another gaming company go under even if I don't like the games they have made recent.

[Thetruth1400]

http://www.mmorpg.com/newsroom.cfm/loadNews/39918




I don't know much about business but how is $6.4mil going to help a gaming company get back on its feat? Hell that's a small amount for some indie games. I can't really see them developing anything with it that's worth noting or investing really.

But like I said I don't know much about business soo.

Chances are, it's going to allow them to finish up some projects which are then going to make them money, allowing them to pay back the debt and move forward. Sure, they're not going to be starting a game from scratch at this point, but again, they seem to have some things in the pipeline close to beta testing stage, which means they're not going to need full game financing.

Overall though, the company is in trouble and needs more than just a small revenue boost like this to remain in business long term. Better of selling off their assets at this point and being absorbed into one of the bigger companies out there.

[Beazy]

Why the hell would ANYONE invest in Failcom? They have created failure after failure for years. How the hell are they even still in business?


/stillSaltyOverAoC

[Tech614]

http://www.mmorpg.com/newsroom.cfm/loadNews/39918




I don't know much about business but how is $6.4mil going to help a gaming company get back on its feat? Hell that's a small amount for some indie games. I can't really see them developing anything with it that's worth noting or investing really.

But like I said I don't know much about business soo.

If it helps them that's good tho, I rather not see another gaming company go under even if I don't like the games they have made recent.

6.5 mil is a hell of a lot of money for making any non AAA game without some massive marketing budget. Like you do realize Beyond Two Souls as a good example had a $34 mil budget, half of which was marketing. This was a full AAA game with hollywood actors in it. Now compare that to something like The Park and lol... yea The Park probably didn't even cost a mil to make.

Funcom will just blow the money on making more trash though so it won't matter. They're just a shitty developer with good ideas but really really bad at putting them on the canvas.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Don't waste all that money Funcom.



>.>

[Dremall]

Haven't even heard of this dev. What do they make?

[Tech614]

Haven't even heard of this dev. What do they make?

Age of Conan and The Secret World would be the only large scale games they have made that people know them for.

They make a crap ton of much much smaller projects however.

[Cosmic Janitor]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funcom

For those interested.. it's a rather peculiar list. They really aren't in good shape and frankly I doubt they have anything in the pipe that could save them, even if they had 10 times that money.

[Dremall]

Age of Conan and The Secret World would be the only large scale games they have made that people know them for.

They make a crap ton of much much smaller projects however.

Heard of the later. Thank for the reply.

[unfilteredJW]

They'll keep getting my money as long as TSW sees content.

[Echocho]

This is great news! The secret world is one of the mest RPGs out there, one that understands that RPG doesn't mean combat simulator

[Slaughty8]

They should just make Anarchy Online 2 and I am very happy, 100% buy and play if it's good. For me, the best game they've made is Anarchy Online.

[Azrile]

Haven't even heard of this dev. What do they make?

A long time ago, they made one good game called The Longest Journey which was a decent single player game. With that, they over-invested and created Age of Conan, which may have been one of the worst AAA MMORPGs ever released. Shortly after AoC, they announced The Secret World MMORPG, which was a fairly decent game, but was mostly ignored because of how crappy they treated their players in AoC. AoC was really the first time I ever experienced a dev team flat out lie to beta testers. There was a laundry list of broken stuff in AoC, but the devs said it was all fixed and their would be a miracle patch on launch day that fixed all the issues we had. At launch, the game was so broken and exactly the same as beta.

It didn´t help that the devs of AoC were the most arrogant and boastful devs on the planet and constantly ridiculed WOW. They were all fired shortly after it launched.

[Dremall]

A long time ago, they made one good game called The Longest Journey which was a decent single player game. With that, they over-invested and created Age of Conan, which may have been one of the worst AAA MMORPGs ever released. Shortly after AoC, they announced The Secret World MMORPG, which was a fairly decent game, but was mostly ignored because of how crappy they treated their players in AoC. AoC was really the first time I ever experienced a dev team flat out lie to beta testers. There was a laundry list of broken stuff in AoC, but the devs said it was all fixed and their would be a miracle patch on launch day that fixed all the issues we had. At launch, the game was so broken and exactly the same as beta.

It didn´t help that the devs of AoC were the most arrogant and boastful devs on the planet and constantly ridiculed WOW. They were all fired shortly after it launched.

Damn. Sounds like they had some issues to say the least.

[Slaughty8]

Why does everybody forget that they created Anarchy Online, back in the days (2001-2004) it was one of the biggest MMO.
In 2004 it had "total subscriptions had risen to 700 000 in late 2004" which back in the day was alot. Wow in Q1 2015 had + 1 500 000 subs. So one can say that in 2004 Anarchy Online had almost half of the WoW subs number. Keep in mind that in 2004 there were much less people playing online games then today so AO had a huge % of the total mmo playerbase.

They took the money earned from AO and invested it into Age of Conan. They also had outside investors, who pushed them to release unfinished game. The biggest problem of Age of Conan was:
- horribly high requirements,
- unoptimized engine,
- exploitable endgame,
- alot of unfinished content,
- server issues.

AO was and is still a great game, and Age of Conan was good but terribly unoptimized.
I played AO from 2002 to 2010. Had many breaks but still enjoy if from time to time
I played Age of Conan at the release for a month, then quit. Was returning from time to time.
Age of Conan at the top had 700 000 subs. They dropped to 100 000 in 2009.

After all Age of Conan, like Warhammer Online, is another example of unfinished game release because of the investors who push you to release it in whatever condition or just "runned out of budget, we have to release no matter what". A huge % of games between 2001 and 2015 were released this way. The latest example is the newest Homefront, showing that it still happends

[Acidbaron]

Why the hell would ANYONE invest in Failcom? They have created failure after failure for years. How the hell are they even still in business?


/stillSaltyOverAoC

Because if we look beyond execution great ideas and concept came from that company that were picked up and used by other game companies. People seem to forget that before AO there wasn't such a thing as instances, different realms of the same area and so forth. They also took risk trying out different things in mmo's if you are able to look past the bugs you'll see that there were some great concepts in those games.