Funcom

Okay.

While we're here, Funcom, they've made Conan Exiles, Dune Awakening.

Their big bread and butter is survival gaming of that style.

Having completed major development on Dune Awakening, they're entering a period of restructuring and they're cutting off huge amounts of staff down to just enough to keep things going.

Um, But yeah, it says that they're committed to supporting, expanding, growing these games in their communities for years to come.

Let's see, the press release noted that this will mean, quote, a period of restructuring for Funcom and, quote, reducing the size of the organization, which yes means, quote, saying goodbye to valued colleagues.

That process begins, quote, now.

So yeah.

Meanwhile, it's running a voluntary redundancy scheme in Germany aimed at reducing headcount by 100 people across its Düsseldorf, Berlin and Main Studios.

Sticking with cuts, developer Funcom is restructuring and cutting staff to focus on live service support for Conan Exiles and Dune Awakening.

Meanwhile, CEO Rui Casillas will step down at the end of the year.

Funcom, of course, was acquired by Tencent in 2020.

And there's also unspecified job cuts also happening at German studio Fish Labs and SCUMM developer GamePires.

Elsewhere, Melbourne-based developer House House will not release its co-op title Big Walk on Xbox, citing alignment with the Palestinian-led Boycott Divestment Sanctions campaign, the BDS campaign, which of course has called for a boycott of Microsoft.

Let's get the bad stuff really out of the way first.

Let's talk about Funcom, some layoffs that have been hitting that studio, and what it means for your MMOs.

Well, I don't think they're shutting anything down, but if there is a studio out there that is all about maintenance, moding its own MMOs, it's Funcom.

We all know, like, Age of Conan, Anarchy Online, The Secret World, three MMOs that...

This studio hasn't mentioned in a very long time, even though they are technically running.

Yeah, exactly.

that was going to be my point.

This is not new behavior for anybody in our MMORPG sphere who's been following what Funcom has been doing, and that has always been focusing on Dune Awakening and Conan Exiles.

of work that motherfucker is.

Funcom has laid off a significant number of staff.

They are going to focus on dune awakening which is their current new mmo but did you know that conan exiles is still a game

yeah i've understand that's still a property that is that is still a product in their in their inventory in their so lineup

For so many reasons, which is the secret world, we're going to nominate that as our MMO Spotlight of the Week.

Yes, Funcom loves to release MMOs and then kind of abandon them and... leave them running you know we were talking before the show that anarchy online still running somewhere back there even though we can't remember the last time we got an update or any work or any anybody from the studio talking about it

it's been so long i genuinely thought it was shut down like

really i think we need to do like whatever happened to on that yeah i think you're right i

agree note that

So, but Secret World, same, you know, this is a game where it came out, Funcom was heaping a lot of expectations on its storytelling, on its world building, on a very different approach for its narrative and poured a lot of resources into it.

And then when it was struggling, you know, it originally was like a subscription only because, of course, that was the time, that was the way things were done back then.

And they realized the same thing everybody else did.

So I'll be talking about it kind of from that perspective later.

But basically, the game publisher Funcom, who's developed and published Dune Awakening, has partnered with the studio Meta4 Interactive to bring Dune Awakening into existing Fortnite creator-made games.

The way that it works basically is that this campaign, it makes it so that Dune Awakening makes an appearance inside two different, very popular Fortnite games.

So not trying to create its own world, but instead integrating into existing games.

And I got to say, man, it was like way more interesting than I thought it would be.

Like I have a lot of respect for what Metaphor Studios does.

You know, so to set up the mechanics, it's very much an acquisition campaign for Funcom and this PC game.

Well, that's very meta because basically the client in this respect is another game, Dune Awakening, and they're going into a different game, Fortnite, to basically advertise and get user acquisition so they can leave Fortnite.

One of the games I worked on, one, got to speak more to, to Mr. Badylak and, uh, said if he-- as you do in the freelance world, "If you-- I wanna be on your radar if you hear about anything." And, uh, then a, a friend of mine who I went-- who, he was in year, year nine in my class when I moved schools.

He moved to Norway, worked for Funcom, went to start his own company, and I was asked by him later, like, "Hey, do you wanna do some Viking music?" And we're talking more stereotypical, like, uh, Viking genre music in this case, uh, which we did.

Right.

And when you say that, you mean like-

...

Funcom's having a good day.

[laughs] Joel Bylos is like, "Whoo." [laughs]

I can't imagine a million people just bought Dune Awakening.

[laughs]

I should have been-

Out of Funcom

... doing my work here