Funcom being Raided by Norwegian Stock Police

Is that why Ragnaros Tourniquet left in a hurry after TSW didn't perform as expected?

Is TSW being shut down too?

I thought they moved to North Carolina? Or was that just the TSW team

Yeah, it's a real bummer. TSW was the coolest shit anyone's done since warcraft in the mmo space too.

Some kind of insider trading thing. Or maybe Illuminati attack on headquarters under COVER of an insider trading scam.

bixxby_sl said:

Yeah, it's a real bummer. TSW was the coolest shit anyone's done since warcraft in the mmo space too.

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Agree, I loved the dungeons and the games tone overall.

Dmitry_sl said:

Some kind of insider trading thing. Or maybe Illuminati attack on headquarters under COVER of an insider trading scam.

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Several employees had sold their shares when they peaked. If you remember, before the launch (like with AoC), the stock prices went up in anticipation. Guess they knew that it would not be the hit they marketed, and sold their stocks before they tanked.

Not sure who or how many did it (if any, but I think that is what they suspect). Well that, and

In a report from the Norwegian site News In English, the ?kokrim has charged Funcom with breaching the Securities Trading Act regarding information disclosed to the market about its ambitious MMO project, The Secret World. The period in which the false or misleading disclosures were made runs from August 2011 to its launch in July 2012, and the two months that followed. There are also questions over how Funcom shared sensitive information during that time

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reading that, it sounds like they are also under suspicion for... false advertizing? Man, how great would it be if gaming companies started to be held accountable for not delivering what they promise in the marketing. If Ferrari marketed their next supercar and delivered a Lada I think they would get sued. Not exactly rare to find games that do almost the equivalent, seems to happen nearly every year (which is why we have all grown skeptical to long NDAs and no reviews before launch date/embargos.) Though to be fair, I think that applies far more to AoC than TSW. TSW actually did some things new and not generic like most mmos. Story and general quests in it are lightyears ahead of any mmo competitor I can think of.

Droigan_sl said:

reading that, it sounds like they are also under suspicion for... false advertizing?

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It would be great, but they specifically mention it's a publicly traded company. So I think the "market" he mislead was the investor market, not the consumer market. Revenue, costs, projections instead of "this is what's going to be in the game coming out."

It's probably a lot closer to the fudging numbers than overhyping their product. They laid off a lot of people recently so it's not surprising to have a disgruntled employee make a phone call about your shady shit.

Tmac47_sl said:

Yeah, unfortunately it's not criminal to lie in your marketing. Hello WAR.

However, it is criminal to fudge numbers.

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Actually fairly sure it is criminal to lie in your marketing. You for instance can't market a product as "This WILL help your backpains" if it is just a sugar pill. The car example I made also stands, if a company defines something in their marketing and advertizements, they usually have to hold up to that in some degree. There are ways around it, like saying "feels like", where they could argue that feeling is subjective. Once they start adding things that could be defined as objective (facts), then they have to hold up to that.

Except in gaming. It is one of the only businesses that keeps getting away with making products that in no way shape or form match their marketing. They also get away with holding back information. Even in music, if you pre-sold an album, marketing it as "This will be the best 12 songs I have ever made", the "best" is subjective, but if people pre-paid for it, there has to be at least 12 songs in the album. Gaming companies can state "this and this will be in the game", market that for pre-orders, and deliver close to vaporware and still get away with it.

I understand that laws are generally made to satisfy shareholders (money talks) and not the consumers, but in this regard, you would think that having gaming companies uphold the same laws everyone else has to, would increase the consumers goodwill and also spendings. Pre-orders, season passes and early access are debated as a negative because we do not know what we will get in the end, the product is unknown, and the negative comes from so many examples of games not holding up to the marketed potential. It shouldn't be like this. If they say "this will be in the game" and people want that, and buy it because of that, they should expect to get what they paid for. Like in my car example, if you bought a Ferrari based on statements of them making the next supercar and they gave you a Prius, you could easily void the purchase. Voiding a digital game purchase because of customer dissatisfaction because the product did not include what was marketed is next to impossible unless the game is so broken it won't run.

Considering gaming is now equal or greater than the movie industry in terms of profits you should think that they had to start following the laws soon.

the hype before tsw release was funcom directly saying in its investor reports that in the worst case, they anticipate TSW selling "as much as aoc" or "only" 1m in sales, and in the best case they expect multiples of that. A few weeks after launch, it turns out nah, the real worst case was like 200k in sales, or 1/5th what they predicted the worst case. so thats pretty much what is getting them into so much trouble.

So basically they showed investors Tortage. Karma.

mkopec_sl said:

Except TSW was actually pretty decent, at least for one play through. They tried something different than the typical WoW clone and that deserves mad props. But like McQuaid, they are forever stained by their past.

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At least Brad acknowledges that he fucked people over. He didn't want Vanguard to launch in its current state. And, HR issues aside, Vanguard was pretty fun.