History
Founded in 1993 by Erik Gloersen, Ian Neil, Andre Backen, Gaute Godager and Olav Mørkrid, the company is one of the leading European independent game developers and publishers. They focus mainly on PC games but have also released games on other consoles such as Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, Super NES, Sega Saturn and Xbox.
In December 2005, Funcom was the first Norwegian game developer to be listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange.
On March 14, 2007, the company abandoned traditional "offline" product distribution (e.g. on optical discs) in favor of digital distribution completely. The main reason for this decision was admittedly the financial losses due to software piracy.
On August 21, 2008, Funcom laid off half of its Customer Service department located in Durham, North Carolina. On November 22, 2008, third parties reported that Funcom fired additional 70% of the staff in their US workforce, possibly endangering future releases.
On September 17, 2008, Gaute Godager left Funcom, stating he was dissatisfied with certain elements of Age of Conan, which he directed. Craig Morrison took over the direction of Age of Conan.
On February 23, 2009, Funcom reported financial losses of approximately $23 million in the fourth quarter of 2008. The unsuccessful launch of Age of Conan was cited as the reason for such steep decline. The chief analyst of DnB NOR, Fredrik Thoresen, estimated that 100,000 subscribers played the game at the time of the report, far below the publisher's expectations, though these numbers were not confirmed by Funcom itself.
On September 1, 2009, Funcom announced the establishment of a new development studio in Montreal, Canada. The new studio has worked on Funcom's two MMORPG projects: The Secret World and the Age of Conan expansion pack Rise of the Godslayer.
On September 29, 2009, Funcom announced a reduction of 20% of its staff, resulting in "significant delay" for the release of The Secret World.
All the perceived actions have been reflected in the 2010 Annual Financial Report. The current amount of employees is 282 (19% reduction to 2009). As the result of the new strategy the operating results came close to the positive value - in 2010 it reached -USD $593 thousand comparing to -USD $10 798 thousand in 2009.
On August 22, 2012 Funcom announced that it layed off half of the company as a cost-adjustment initiative due to the poor performance of their MMORPG The Secret World. Some of the lay-offs were temporary. They blamed this poor performance on the Metacritic score of the game and the launch of competing titles like Diablo 3.
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