It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
On Wednesday, it was reported here that Funcom's Oslo, Norway offices were raided by the local authorities in connection to the ongoing investigation of stock practices surrounding The Secret World's launch some 18 months or so ago. Today, Erling Ellingsen, Director of Communications for Funcom reached out to MMORPG.com to offer these words.
My apologies for not getting back to you sooner; as you can imagine, it's been a hectic couple of days!
We would very much like to provide you with the latest news regarding yesterday's events, and we hope you can relay this to your readers as well so that they have the latest information and perspectives.
Yesterday, the company received a visit from Økokrim (the Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime) who is conducting an investigation on the suspicion of infringement of the provisions of the Securities Trading Act with regards to financial information given to the market surrounding the launch of The Secret World. Funcom is of course fully cooperating with Økokrim and the company is providing them with all necessary information to make sure the situation can be clarified and resolved as soon as possible.
Production on all Funcom games continues as normal, and the company remains fully committed to games in development as well as the continued operation and updating of existing live games. Yesterday's events is not expected to have any impact on the company's continued operation or the development on future releases. Funcom's key priorities are the development of the upcoming LEGO® Minifigures Online, as well as supporting and expanding on the live games Age of Conan, The Secret World and Anarchy Online with new and exciting content. In terms of The Secret World, developers are currently in the process of finalizing its ninth content update, which will send players on a grand adventure through Tokyo, and Funcom will be releasing new information and screenshots from this update soon.
Please also note that trading in the company stock was only suspended temporarily yesterday, and trading was back to normal shortly thereafter.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
Comments
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view6/2207524/saving-private-ryan-helmet-o.gif
Thanks for the news update, Bill & Erling.
why pointing at the Loomies all the time? Them sneaky Templars are held Europe their own playground for centuries...
"For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed:
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!"
~Lord George Gordon Byron
nothing to see here guys- move along....
If everything wasn't fine they wouldn't have lifted the suspension on the trading of their stock so quickly.
Sounds like a stupid clerical error happened somewhere.
The police raid your business over suspected illegal operations, and everything is just fine.
Sure.
Khm... I think you missed the timeline, by a mile. When AoC was released, TSW was already in developement. AoC was profitable - even with the bumpy launch - and had a pretty stable (but admittedly not very high) population after the first year's drop, and it remained during the years. AoC went f2p in 2011, but with a crappy model, so the subscribers stayed subbed - true, there wasn't a big player influx either because free players were uninterested. TSW launched in 2012.
(and FC had a few other games on the side, I'm not sure but I think they've launched TSW's developement from the income of Dreamfall)
It's offtopic, but Crossfire's top place is the clear result of pay2win that's what you get if you have a low-demanding game (seriously, it runs even on a washing machine - ok, maybe not on that), with a large playerbase, and a model where you have to pay if you want to do anything.
You don't have to look that far to find similar models btw, EA is doing the very same with their Play4Free titles, I was surprised none of those were on the list, but I guess the population is much less than what the eastern audience can provide.
Wouldn't Oslo be the Templars?
That's exactly what I wrote above... everyone's pointing at the Loomies because of those lame youtube videos, while Europe was always a Templar territory, that's why Illuminati had to make a new start on the colonies in the first place...
I bet this raid was the work of that old hag Dame Julia, she can't be trusted
Or maybe we are just making our presence felt overseas now that you have grown fat and complacent with a need for consumer goods such as the Xbox so strongly ingrained in your society that your youth will riot in the streets of London for one and a bottle of cheap American booze. You can sit on your old money. We will print the new.
"We will print the new." just for the record, I'm with KG as well that's why I try to frame them rusty old Templars.
After reading the title "Response to Police Raid" I was expecting "DON'T TAZE ME BRO!"
But seriously since it isn't the US financial system (the one were they slap you on the wrist for getting caught, not doing wrong) it really depends on how bad they fudged the numbers. If they overestimated their stock by doubling it... they're pretty much gone. Hopefully it's just some missing paperwork.... but.... they request that kind of thing before they raid you, so not sure. I guess we will have to wait and see what happens.
lol!
+1