Funcom Fires 70% of Their U.S. Staff This Morning
Not sure what this means really. Of course the Doom and Gloom crowd are screaming this is the end.
This is strictly a rumor, but sources are saying it is good.
Some had this to say as other thoughts on this change...
"Funcom has been laying off staff for the past few months. They did a round of layoffs in early September and did indeed let another large chunk of people go again on Wednesday morning.
Funcom also offered a severance opt-out to the QA and CS personnel in the states, which seems to have been a very popular choice. At a guess, it would appear that 90% of their workforce in the states is or will be gone by Monday."
"With less players and server merges, they don't need as many people in customer support. Their financial report said they had over 300 people in the company anyway, (are the ones in US counted?). Even 70 people working on TSW! I suppose they are just trying to cut the costs down"
So, is this it? Some of the stuff from above was said about Tabula Rasa also. But, Funcom is a different beast. I am unsure of how their funds work, but they seem to have some various properties that are outside the game genre.
But how about Age of Conan? Time will tell.
2 comments:
Most game companies in US seem to get rid of people after they are done with a game, since they do not need as many after release.
If it is mainly customer support people, then it likely means they have not done as well as they planned in North America.
But they are hiring people for the Oslo office and they are launching AoC in new countries (Russia, Korea etc). I do not think there is any need to call doom yet.
Clearly not a great sign for the game, but overall hard to read the tea leaves. It does seem like AoC is in trouble, but I also doubt that Funcom will cut and run as fast as NC Soft does.
Post a Comment