14 DAY TRIAL // Ole Schreiner, who is the new chief executive officer working at Funcom, has revealed that after the recent re-structuring process his company is not making a profit again, mainly because of the performance of the recently launched The Secret World.
Speaking to GameIndustry the executive revealed that Funcom would be stable for the coming months and that it had plans to deliver monthly content updates for its MMO despite the recent delays that affected the delivery of new Issues for the game.
Schreiner stated that, “That’s also why we are committing to the ambitious post-launch update plan. We’re quite comfortable with where we are now and what we’re providing our players.”
The CEO also commented on the business model that The Secret World used, saying that the company planned to make sure that they were running a subscription model for as long as possible.
Schreiner added, “We tried leaving our options open during development so that we could launch with a different model should we have decided during development that’s what we wanted, but eventually we did settle on the subscription model and that’s what informed much of the game’s design.”
Funcom also has the option of moving The Secret World to the free-to-play model as long as the player base gets too low. The company has previously managed a similar process for another MMO, Age of Conan.
The new CEO acknowledges that the current game market supports subscriptions, free-to-play and even hybrid models and believes that a developer’s choices should be linked to the kind of experience he plans to deliver to players.
The Secret World has managed to sell about 200,000 units since it was launched during July, which is significantly lower than the company expected.
In the future, Funcom is thinking about creating smaller titles that cost less to develop and are easier to operate.