Funcom Layoffs Won’t Affect Age of Conan
Last week just before the industry all but shut down for Thanksgiving, MMO fansite Ten Ton Hammer broke the news that Funcom was laying off as much as 70% of their North American staff. Of course, Funcom’s current primary game, Age of Conan, was heavily developed in Europe, and the layoffs were supposedly mostly relegated to the customer service and quality assurance departments. Speaking to MTV Multiplayer on Monday, Funcom product manager Erling Ellingsen confirmed that the heavy layoffs should not impact Age of Conan’s continued development:
“Our aim is for this to not affect development of Age of Conan or any of our other games, at all. We are sticking firmly to our plans. The Xbox 360 version of the game is still in production, but as before we are not committing to any specific dates. I wish I could give you more information, but I can’t at the time being.”
The layoffs come after a major server merging and a rumored exodus of players to a certain other popular MMORPG — and if less people are playing, it makes sense that Funcom would need less customer service employees. The publisher is also hard at work on a recently announced expansion pack for Age of Conan, and though an Xbox 360 port of the MMO remains in development, Funcom product director Jorgen Tharaldsen has stated that it is not the publisher’s main priority at the moment.
Given their powerful competition and the difficult economic realities of the moment, it’s not surprising to see Funcom struggling a little bit, but hopefully this batch of layoffs is not a bad sign of things to come and Age of Conan can actually remain unaffected.
Related posts:
- Funcom reaffirms commitment to AoC on PC and Xbox 360 following layoffs
- Age of Conan 360 is "Not Key Priority" For Funcom
- Funcom on The Secret World and AoC
- FunCom Talks Age of Conan Bans
- FunCom Nerfs Big Boobage in Age of Conan?
