Funcom suffering a loss of investor confidence
Filed under: Age of Conan, Business models, MMO industry
Funcom, makers of Age of Conan, are dealing with some serious financial flux. Since the launch of AoC, their stock has tumbled from $54 to $24 a share on the Oslo Stock Exchange (last price as of the end of the trading day on Friday). This represents the loss of over 55% of the stock value. With little news coming from the world of high finance on the subject, it seems that investors may be jumping ship from the gaming industry starlet.
Much speculation continues to be made regarding the true status of Age of Conan and its success or failure, with references to the bugs of all sizes seen post-launch. There have also been several accusations of forum censorship and a number of highly publicized player flights from the game, which may be contributing to market fears that the game is in trouble with its fan base.
On the flip side, it should be noted that the price of Funcom stock had been fairly steady, around $25, for several months prior to March of this year. A sharp increase in price coincided with the release of X-Play pre-order statistics for AoC about two months before boxes hit the shelves. That was followed by a distinct downturn just a few weeks after the game's drop date and the slide has continued since, returning it back to familiar price territory just this past week.
So the question remains: was the $54 stock price just a temporary bubble around the launch when pre-orders were running rampant or have investors been scared off with the sentiment around the game?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-27-2008 @ 10:48AM
SgtBaker said...
Yeah, it seems it was just launch bubble.. darn, would have been good to catch that wave :-) Oh well, next time.
Would be interesting to see how AoC subscription numbers are faring post-launch bubble.. anyone got a link?
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7-29-2008 @ 6:58AM
anduz said...
Compared to the level before the launch of Age of Conan the Funcom stock has still gone up as far as I know. It increased significantly right at the release, and now it's dropping back to a more normal level. But I somehow can't believe this wasn't expected by investors considering you'd need a ground breaking product like the ipod to increase your stock value by 60% and stay there.
I'm wondering how this ended up on Eurogamer though, it's from massively, but it originates to a blogger from a site called wow-riot who has done another bogus AoC article in the past... You could've easily found the Funcom stock and gotten the full picture on the matter, but I guess you didn't bother because credibility means nothing to you?
I guess massively is worthless as a news source.
7-27-2008 @ 11:43AM
Kamokazi said...
Yes, the game is doing poorly and stock prices are way down, but a lot of the rest of that infomation is misleading, innaccurate, or flat-out wrong. You may not want to use a source clearly biased towards WoW next time, eh?
The censorship thing is essentially untrue. The only posts I have ever seen locked usually got to the point where they were insulting and being derogatory toward the other players posting in the thread. Just go to the general forum now, not only are there posts complaining about the game, the MAJORITY of the posts are complaining about the game. If the moderators are supposed to be censoring, they are doing a piss-poor job.
And with the billing bug...If that could be proved to be intentional, EU regulators would have them shut down so fast it wouldn't be funny. It's just a bug...a very serious bug, but just a bug and they don't deserve to be vilianized for it.
They really messed up initially. Ignoring bugs, player concerns, etc. But from what I have seen, they have taken almost a complete 180 on that stance and are really doing a lot of good now. Unfortunately, they have probably acted too late, and the game is never going to get to where it should have been.
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7-28-2008 @ 8:19AM
Tridus said...
They don't deserve to be villanized for billing people post-cancellation? Thats not a bug, its theft. (Well, technically its credit card fraud, but thats a fancy name for theft.)
If they can't get a billing system functioning correctly, they deserve to be thrown under the bus. Then again the game has so many other bugs, whats one more on the pile?
7-28-2008 @ 8:54AM
Kamokazi said...
To commit fraud, you have to intentionally mislead people with the purpose of causing harm to them, and it has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law since it would be a criminal case(at least in the US). This is not intentional, it is a bug/error with their billing system. Many other corporations across the world have had problems with accidential credit card billing. 99.9% of them never get charged with fraud. Why? Because it was accidential and they remedied the issue in a (somewhat) timely fashion.
Heck, it's not even the first MMO to have such problems. Tabula Rasa and Hellgate most recently, if I was ambitious I would look up more.
Yes, they messed up. They deserve to be ridiculed and criticized for their mistake. They do not deserve to be called a villian or thief for it (Unless, by some obscure chance it is discovered to be intentional, in which case I will recind my statements).
7-27-2008 @ 11:50AM
Halidan said...
I can't believe you guys are speculating on market reaction. First of all there are too many variables to state that this is related to people leaving the game. Investors don't care and don't read forums or sites like this for financial advice. Second the whole damn market is in a slump. If you would take your head out of your arse you would see that teh market is switching to commodities because stocks are flopping all around.
If you really want a good reason to blame for these stock dips you might want to look at rising energy costs, concerns over disposable income in the US, and investors not wanting to take risks on brands that aren't well known in the market.
Usually i like this site but this shite reporting has got to go.
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7-27-2008 @ 12:03PM
recursive said...
Launch bubble I'm thinking. Investors are simply still coming to grips with how this market and it's launches work, but it turned out the bags of money didn't fly out of the windows of the Blizzard offices straight into the hands of the new thing.
Can't blame em really, I mean, going by Massively's own hyping upfront, we as gamers don't even get how these things go yet, why should they?
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7-27-2008 @ 4:21PM
TheDawg said...
AoC is suffering player flight and subscription woes for sure. The game was hyped to be the second coming of WoW and it turned put top be AO's good looking but clumsy and dim witted cousin. The games amateurish GM's and volunteer forum moderators are only serving to make a bad situation worse. Couple that with customer service issues and you have an already bad situation with a increasingly frustrated fanbase.
Was it overhyped, I think it was for sure but whose fault was that?
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7-27-2008 @ 8:20PM
Caedes said...
You did some poor research how can you mix up USD with NOK? I mean the results would be more like 10,4$ to 4,6$.
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7-28-2008 @ 1:32PM
Dan Bradley said...
As Halidan suggests, this is entirely the wrong forum for this kind of material. With all due respect to the author, you don't have the context or expertise to write insightfully on the subject.
I don't get my videogame information from the Wall Street Journal for the same reason that I don't come to Massively for financial information. Stick to what you know.
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7-28-2008 @ 4:28PM
nicholsml said...
I played AoC from launch to about a week or so ago. There is a huge player loss rate going on. Before I quit my guild went from having 60-70 players online at prime time to about 1 or 2. The game was destroyed by a huge inbalance between casters in the game and melee classes. Melee had to use delayed reaction attacks that required someone to stand still when you hit the finisher and the attacks used stamina (which is needed for attacks and sprinting) while the casters only used stamina to run away and stop and cast on the gimped melee classes when they used up all of their attack stamina keeping up. It will take way to long to fix a core mechanics flaw like that.
That was just my experience with the game, but there are many other problems also such as incomplete quests, broken siege mechanics, feats that don't work at all for every class, a memory leak that crashes the game all the time and of course nothing at all to do when you reach level 80. People are leaving Age of Casters to play something worthwhile.
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7-29-2008 @ 9:50AM
Darth_Mueller said...
They dont deal in $ in Oslo, its NOK:
http://www.oslobors.no/ob/aksje_kursutvikling?p_instrid=ticker.ose.FUNCOM&menu2show=1.1.2.1.&p_period=1YEAR
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8-20-2008 @ 10:20PM
Tom-AZ said...
i Love the Failcom employees blogging in the first two. Who are you guys kidding?
The stock prices are dropping because they read all the negative reviews and comments on blogs and someone tells someone who tells someone that this is not the red hot game it was hyped to be. They don't know about the bugs or why AoC is failing, but they heard its failing and that is enough for them.
If one firm says pull Funcom stock, they ALL pull the funcom stock.
Its also why you don't lie to your players and then try to black them out by locking threads and deleting them.
And to the poster who said that is not happening. You are either mis-informed or a funcom employee or a straight out liar as there are many many screenshots out there of forums that were civil and well meaning talking about reforms of Aoc that were locked and moved.
There is a movement out there of disgruntled players that is gathering. We are writing content now that will blog and attack AoC and funcom on a daily basis until their company goes under. I personally hate WoW and played about 9 levels, before i realized that leveling was all the game had to offer so this isn't about WoW, its about destroying a company that lied to its players and continued to do so, thinking it could get away with it.
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