Funcom

Funcom CFO Resigns; Q4 Losses Reported at 23.3 Million

2009-02-23T20:03:57Z

In news originally published by gamesindustry.biz, it looks like Age of Conan's woes continue, this time on a financial level, as Funcom reported losses of more than 23 million USD for the fourth quarter of 2008.

In addition to poor performance in both sales and subscriptions, the company's CFO, Olav Sandnes, has resigned from his position.

"Funcom is a company with a substantial potential based on a unique combination of skill sets in a fast growing global market. I wish Trond Aas and the rest of the organisation all the best in realising the full potential of the company," Sandnes said about leaving the company.

For the entire year, Funcom reported losses of around 33.8 million USD, though revenues did rise sharply in the fourth quarter, primarily due to Age of Conan subscriptions.

To read more on the article, head over to gamesindustry.biz.

Funcom is hiring

2008-05-31T03:27:43Z

If you're interested to work in the gaming industry, Funcom might have a position just for you.

Seeing the great success we have had with Conan so far, we see the need to continue staffing up our Community Department. We are now filling up four more positions internally, and three of those are now out.

As Funcom has a tradition and long history with recruiting people from our communities we therefore wanted to point you in the direction of these jobs. Should you wish to work in Funcom and on games like Age of Conan, please apply.

The new positions which are now open are:

German Community Coordinator – Zurich

French Community Coordinator – Zurich

Community Information Coordinator - Oslo

We also have many Customer Service openings in Durham, USA

Funcom Is Hiring

2007-12-13T04:50:13Z

If you've ever wanted to become involved in the game industry, then Funcom may have what you're looking for in the form of three job openings at the company. Now, it doesn't appear that this is for a specific game currently, but they're hiring translators for three different languages -- English/French, English/German and English/Spanish. Head on over; who knows, maybe you'll be one of the people translating Age of Conan to another language soon!

While you're there, you can read up on the game, so you know the world, the characters, the gods, and the beastiary. Hey, it never hurts to enhance your knowledge -- even if it doesn't pay off in landing you the job, you'll at least know a lot more about the game for when it launches in March!

Game Developers to stop making offline games

2007-03-17T00:22:03Z

Piracy, as we all know, is a phenomenon that has exploded along with the introduction of the internet over the past decade. It is estimated that several hundreds of millions of dollars is "lost" to this illegal market. It is not without consequence, however, that companies are shifting their strategy around game development to require online authentication of their software. Funcom, one of the major players in the gaming industry who are responsible for games such as "Dreamfall", "The Longest Journey" and the upcoming "Age of Conan" are putting their foot down.

Funcom CEO Trond Arne Aas told the press that they have decided to discontinue their development of "offline" games. The loss of revenue to piracy is just too big. He noted that prior to Dreamfall even reaching the stores last year, over 200'000 copies had allready been downloaded and distributed illegally on piracy websites such as The Pirate Bay, and according to Aas, the widespread piracy of today is radically changing the gaming industry.

Game developers who focus solely on offline games are running into some major problems. For exacmple, in France the gaming industry is in a crisis due to piracy.

The game development industry is not alone about noticing the effects. Other industries like movies, music and porno are reporting decreasing sales, both in box and internet sales due to the large amount of "free" websites on the net. For example, the sales of porno DVD"s decreased by a whopping 15% last year.

3 things you should know about intellectual property rights:

1) Data and intellectual property theft is illegal almost everywhere globally.

2) Copying/duplication for privat use is legal a lot of places if you own an original copy of the media.

3) Downloading games, movies or music from "open" websites such as The Pirate Bay is illegal, and not only do you expose yourself to digital theft but due to the way most "open" P2P networks operate you also end up re-distributing the data yourself.