Funcom Responds To Trade Infringement Allegations

[Karloff]

Funcom Responds To Trade Infringement Allegations

Funcom's hard at work on Age of Conan and Secret World, and is cooperating with the economic crime unit.

When Økokrim - the Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime - raided Funcom's offices, the natural assumption would have been that all was up with The Secret World developer. Not so, says Funcom. Its communications head Erling Ellingsen has leapt into the breach, saying that Funcom is cooperating fully with Økokrim, and work continues on its titles.

"Production on all Funcom games continues as normal, and the company remains fully committed to games in development as well as the continued operation and updating of existing live games," says Ellingsen. "Yesterday's events are not expected to have any impact on the company's continued operation or the development on future releases."

The raid is connected to the release of The Secret World, and there's suspicion of infringement of the provisions of the Securities Trading Act with regards to financial information given to the market when the game launched. Just before launch, Funcom's former CEO Trond Aas [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/119539-Former-Funcom-CEO-Faces-Insider-Trading-Allegations] stepped down, taking himself off the company's primary insider list. Once off the list, he could sell stock, and he dumped 650,000 shares as quickly as he could, in a bid to get rid of 1.5 million shares.

The sell-off was discovered, Funcom's share price went through the floor - dropping from It did not do well [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/121718-Trouble-Comes-to-Funcom]. It tried to go subscription, and people hated it. It switched to buy to play, and numbers went up.

The Secret World is still going, Ellingsen reminds us. "In terms of The Secret World, developers are currently in the process of finalizing its ninth content update, which will send players on a grand adventure through Tokyo, and Funcom will be releasing new information and screenshots from this update soon."

Source: Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-29-funcom-under-investigation-offices-closed]


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[Ed130 The Vanguard]

It looks like Trond may get his Aas handed to him in court.

Stupid joke aside, I really hope he gets nailed, when CEO's pull stunts like this...

 

[tehroc]

I really enjoyed the story and atmosphere of Secret World, but making it a MMO was is biggest fault. The game would have been great as a coop console release.

 

[StriderShinryu]

This is very good to hear (well, the part about the games not being impacted anyway). I just recently started playing Secret World thanks to the Holiday Steam Sale and I am absolutely loving it. I know it's a little early, but I would say it's probably the best MMO I've played since The Matrix Online.

 

[flying_whimsy]

That's what Funcom gets for not continuing the Longest Journey and Dreamfall.

Bitter fanboy comments aside, I really hope they nail that former CEO; business leaders like that disgust me.

 

[roguewriter]

I really enjoyed the story and atmosphere of Secret World, but making it a MMO was is biggest fault. The game would have been great as a coop console release.

Completely agree with one slight addendum. It would have found much more success as a primarily single player, open world RPG with Co-Op options and MP arenas. Focus should have been on the single player aspect, especially considering that, even at launch, the game was essentially designed to be a single player game with only raids and what not requiring LFG.

It'll always be kind of heartbreaking that I'll never get to play the game myself as I'm not a PC gamer. Perhaps if the game would have been far more lucrative Funcom might have attempted bringing the game to Next Gen. The Dev Team once discussed in a Game AMA that bringing TSW to next gen consoles actually would have been rather easy given how the game engine runs and the world is built, or somesuch.

Still, should have just been the aforementioned open world RPG with plenty of room for expansions.