Age of Conan subs fall below 100,000

By Games Industry.biz Published 23 February, 2009

Funcom finance chief quits after huge losses.

Funcom has reported its financial results for the fourth quarter, revealing an operating loss of USD 23.3 million due to the lagging performance of Age of Conan, writes GamesIndustry.biz.

According to recent estimates by DnB NOR Markets, subscriber levels for Age of Conan are now below 100,000, says E24.

The poor performance is compounded by the announcement that the company's chief financial officer, Olav Sandnes, has resigned from the position.

"Funcom is a company with a substantial potential based on a unique combination of skill sets in a fast growing global market. I wish Trond Aas and the rest of the organisation all the best in realising the full potential of the company," commented Sandnes.

"Age of Conan was the third best-selling PC game in 2008 in the US market, after World of Warcraft and Spore," the company explained, saying it was hampered by "shorter average subscription periods than anticipated".

"The company's current sales and marketing initiatives focus on launches in new territories, as well as revitalising Age of Conan in existing core markets."

Earlier this year, Funcom announced that it would be closing over half of its servers for the MMO, reducing the number from 49 to 18. This followed the resignation of Funcom's co-founder, Gaute Godager, who said he was "dissatisfied" with Age of Conan.

The company predicts that the first quarter of 2009 will see revenues between USD 6 million and 8 million, stemming from Age of Conan subscriptions.

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Comments (57) Latest comment 3 years ago

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  • Eraysor #1 3 years ago

    "Age of Conan was the third best-selling PC game in 2008 in the US market, after World of Warcraft and Spore."

    The PC realm is more in trouble than I thought :S

    Hold on, what about WotLK? Or as an expansion does that not count?

  • videogangs #2 3 years ago

    I don't think the top 3 best selling games is much of a mark of a market in trouble, plus once again I'd wager that statistic ignores download sales (I think it's fair to say at this point while they may not ignore them altogether, a large number of savvy PC gamers don't bother venturing down to say GAME on day of release any more).

    It's no wonder the MMO market is such a slow place for innovation- More MMOs seem to flop than succeed, and unfortunately represent huge financial risks for their investors. Right now it seems as if the only way to stave off the death knell of mediocrity is with alternate funding models.

  • iokthemonkey #3 3 years ago

    I'm saying nowt.

  • Cannibal #4 3 years ago

    I was interested in this but my hardware wasn't up to scratch, and then mixed reviews followed.

  • ZuluHero #5 3 years ago

    See.. Like the ad on the side of the article, it was promised that i could meet people (read: Girls) and "hack their limbs off"*

    Unfortunately neither proved to be true. Don't get me wrong, i loved the first 20 levels of the game, but that might as well have been offline. The game just wasn't the same after 20, and the dwindling community was the straw that broke the camels back.

    *Not that I want to meet girls and hack their limbs off, you have to understand. It’s just unfortunate that in that ad, the both sentences are stringed together…
    Edited by 1 at 23/02/09 @ 16:58

  • Kremlik Verified Co-Founder, Crash To Desktop #6 3 years ago

    The game wasn't fun past 20, it required too good of a pc to play, and the class balance was handled badly and which for a pvp based game is very bad plus WAR comming out with almost the same 'missing' features didn't help.

    Shame really.

  • Slabbathepave #7 3 years ago

    @iokthemonkey

    I bet you want to though eh?

  • Pirotic #8 3 years ago

    They really have no-one other than themselves to blame for all this, the game sold extremely well, plenty of people gave it more than a decent chance to impress but it was released in such a state that the vast majority canceled before the free trial was over and never came back.

  • iokthemonkey #9 3 years ago

    I've really nothing to say on the matter, except that I expected this announcement sooner.

    I pity the "ground troops" in the studio who worked so hard on this game but at the end of the day, Funcom have nobody to blame but themselves. It's no wonder the subscription periods were "shorter than expected." That's what happens when you release an unfinished game with no content beyond the newbie areas and fail to deliver on even the most basic of promises made at release.

    Well, okay so I did say something there, but still...

  • uiruki #10 3 years ago

    Eraysor: It sold loads but hardly anyone played past the first month and even more quit after that.

    Where's that guy who said we were all idiots for not liking it?

  • FortysixterUK #11 3 years ago

    I think I may have posted a similar comment to this before. The fact the game got released early was the fault of Eidos who were desperate for a quick profit, and they forced Funcom to release the game before it was finished, I kinda got this as 2nd hand info from a friend of mine who works in Eidos QA ( who also advised me the new Tomb Raider wouldn't sell too well either)

    If Funcom could guarantee a more stable gameplay experience, rather than regular crashes when zoning, or setting Gfx to max in one zone only to have them reset when you spawned in the next back to medium, I would go back ,as I thoroughly enjoyed it.

    Essentially Conans fail is probably the fault of Eidos. Anyway they are Squaresofts problem now...and as for this comment by ZULUHERO
    --------------------------------------
    See.. Like the ad on the side of the article, it was promised that i could meet people (read: Girls) and "hack their limbs off"*

    Unfortunately neither proved to be true. Don't get me wrong, i loved the first 20 levels of the game, but that might as well have been offline. The game just wasn't the same after 20, and the dwindling community was the straw that broke the camels back.

    *Not that I want to meet girls and hack their limbs off, you have to understand. It’s just unfortunate that in that ad, the both sentences are stringed together…

    ----------------------------------------


    O-Kaaay.....you guys keep him talking, I'll call the police....

  • Taximan #12 3 years ago

    I still so wish that this would have been released as an Elder-Scrolls or Stalker-esque massively singleplayer experience instead. There simply aren't enough of them. Compare that to the over-crowded MMORPG genre.

  • butler` #13 3 years ago

    That's what you get for making a bad game. People go on about WoW's monopoly and how no one can compete, but that's bullshit. There's only been two direct attempts at its throne and they were both half-assed IMO; though WAR came pretty close it has to be said.

  • mrcheesyelf #14 3 years ago

    HAHAHA, the money men forced the game out before it was ready, t, now thats coming back to bite them in the ass, here was so much hype too, it could have done so well, but now there is too much bad press for it to ever turnaround now, should have been brave enough to hold off the release until it was ready, hopefully this will be a lesson for other

  • Synthesis #15 3 years ago

    Does this mean Anarchy Online was more successful?

  • Placebo #16 3 years ago

    My wife nearly took a job with them in the middle of last year, thank goodness we changed our minds, we'd probably be looking for new jobs somewhere else right about now :(

  • Velios #17 3 years ago

    The game was crap, simple as that.

  • Ryze #18 3 years ago

    I guess everyone's just too busy playing World of Warcraft.

    These competitors may need a new business model, and / or new methods of promoting their games.

  • MMJoe #19 3 years ago

    That's one unfortunately placed advert in that article...

  • Lemming81 #20 3 years ago

    Good riddance. I find their "Age of Conan was the third best-selling PC game in 2008 in the US market, after World of Warcraft and Spore." comment extremely dubious. Off the top of my head I'd guess WAR and Left 4 Dead probably sold more copies than that.
    Edited by 1 at 23/02/09 @ 20:35

  • Orange #21 3 years ago

    AoC was so unfinished. The design potential was there, they just didn't implement it. Whether they wasted too much time and resources being overambitious, lacked competence or just ran out of money.

  • SleepyMagpie #22 3 years ago

    Just like I predicted. Funcom would be getting the kiss of death around February when the figures came in..

    2 more things:

    1. videogangs writes that "Right now it seems as if the only way to stave off the death knell of mediocrity is with alternate funding models."

    Spoken like a true businessman. No, what needs to happen is that the grubby, grabbing-hands of money-men need to be kept off products UNTIL they are finished, and realize it's in EVERYONE'S interests. Eidos most probably being the perpetrator in this particular case. God, did they EVER pass over to the dark side.

    videogangs, you have no idea what makes and keeps a MMORPG solid and paying, and possibly, a license to print money, as in WoW's case.

    2. The claim at AoC being 3rd best selling PC game in the US in 2008 is probably true. This is not so hard to believe. The thing that the money-grabbing publishers and money-men forget though is that MMOs are about longevity and content. You can lie and put bullet-points about fantastic content that doesn't exist on the cover of the box and blab abou it in interviews, but people will find out once they start playing the game. As per AoC and missing much bespoken and promised content. And then they will leave.

    These problems are not really rocket-science. Money-men should just stay off the champagne during their power-lunches a bit.
    And get a clue.


  • Vinicity #23 3 years ago

    Bah! Funcom should concentrate on Dreamfall Chapters instead...

  • MrChuckles #24 3 years ago

    My mate bought it, and was bored within 2 weeks. I borrowed it off him a week later and as bored after a week. Impressively one copy managed to lose 2 players within the first month, maybe some kind of record?

    I think the main thing i disliked was the combat, the whole 'left, middle or right' was just not much fun tbh.

  • ZuluHero #25 3 years ago

    ho hum. I thought the whole stance and combat hit/off balancing thing was more of an evolution to mmos tbh. It certainly was a step up from just auto-attacking and spamming "1"...

  • paulsaz #26 3 years ago

    just make the logest journey 3 before you go belly up please funcom. (and actually put an ending in it)

  • Slabbathepave #27 3 years ago

    Class balance killed AoC for me. I just found it to be all over the shop at times. Its PvE was alot of fun (when it worked) and i have some fond memories of slicing and dicing for massive damage with my Barbarian but take that over to PvP (main reason i play any MMO) and the whole thing fell down horribly.

    Casters (as far as i am aware) just click on you and then click an ability....the way it has always been...

    Melee had to put in a direction button combo and correctly manoever to avoid player sheilding, whilst double tapping a direction in order to gain an evasion buff (WTF?) and hopefully time the last swng of thier weapon just in time to hit them with massive damage. Thats one attack. -.-

    Caster clicks button and does spell damage that isnt affected by my shielding, will damage me regardless. Caster uses AOE with a single button press that does spell damage that isnt affected by my shielding.

    Caster stands at a distance and blasts me to death.

    A healers 'Heal over time' out heals the damage my Cyclone of steal does....a heal over time mind...not a BIG heal....a heal over time... a small amount of health every few seconds for a limited amount of time...that heals enough to cancel out (arguably) the games most damaging attack... a Barbarians only attack worth using.

    TEMPEST'S OF SET!!!!

    A Tempets of Set could stand still and bash AOE and kill everything around them fast enough for it to actually work more often than not.

    The game came down to healers and who had most and everyone else no matter how clever the tactics was rubbish and stood no chance.

    I try to be fair but hot diggidy dang that game was shit. Its PvP was a stinking sack of rancid baboon fetch.

    This post was like taking a shit.

    *breathes deep*

  • Plewt #28 3 years ago

    No game has made me feel so much contempt for its developer as Age of Conan.

  • 4thVariety #29 3 years ago

    @Slabbathepave

    If numbers decide the outcome of the match more than anything, then it will boil down to what you describe in ANY game. Either the character's attribute numbers determine the match, or the number of players on each team, if that is not limited.

    Before anything changes, Funcom would have to change the way battles are decided. But it is unlikely they will turn AoC from a number game into something where skill or tactics decide a battle. Too much work.

  • paulf #30 3 years ago

    I quite enjoyed age of conan, it's a pretty decent single player game up to level 20 and I played each of the class archetypes to this level. After that however it's just not very good. It only sold well cause people were a bit bored of WoW at the time, WOTLK expansion comes out and the subs subside. I still think it would do pretty well on xbox 360 if they released a finished version though

  • iokthemonkey #31 3 years ago

    Essentially Conans fail is probably the fault of Eidos.

    ----

    Being pressured to release early is one thing. However, keep in mind Funcom worked to milestones/agreed targets BOTH parties agreed to. The game SHOULD have been a lot better than it was when Eidos requested the launch. However, if you look at the state of the game now, it STILL could do with another 6 months of fixes and content patches. So even being generous, Funcom was - essentially - a YEAR behind schedule.

  • iokthemonkey #32 3 years ago

    I worry that WoW's dominance in the MMO genre is killing all new IP coming through just by being so hugely successful.

    ----

    I think Bill Roper's comments in the piece elsewhere on EG make a valid point - ignore WoW. Nobody is going to do WoW numbers again, not even Blizzard.

    There are other IPs/MMOs out there that are massively (no pun intended) successful. WAR's 300K is a very good userbase. LOTRO is estimated to have a shade over that level. Even City of Heroes has around 100K subscribers.

    Granted, that's not Blizzard's millions, but nothing is. To say you're failing is like comparing KLM to NASA. KLM obviously "fail" because they don't fly passengers to the moon. (Okay, not that NASA do either these days, but you follow my analogy.)

    Judge on individual merits, not on competition. Trying to create a "WoW killer" is more harmful than anything WoW could ever to do the MMO market.

  • penhalion #33 3 years ago

    age of conan installed to something rediculous like 32gigs and had some seriously bad gameplay imbalances. It was also (most crucially) not very much fun to play.

  • TitusCrow #34 3 years ago

    its over kent.. no its over! you only get 1 chance to launch and if you fail now you fail for ever. im a big r.e howard fan and coudnt wait for this game, the first 20 level's were great, i guess it shows what the company are capable of if they maybe had another 18months dev time to polish every land to this level.

    pr0 tip! if your a shareholder in any mmo in development now have the balls to take the hit untill the game is ready for release, if not you sell a bunch of boxes and get left with devalued stock which will tank by the month till said games death.

    lots of people loved this world and really wanted to like it and play it for years, this good will has been irriverably squandered now..

    r.i.p conan

  • Darkjinxter #35 3 years ago

    I too am an RE Howard's Conan fan and looked forward to AoC long before its' release. I failed to reach level 80, stopping short at 72. Couldn't take the grind anymore. I may resub for a month and try again.

    Taximan made a good point that AoC could have been much better as a single player game. Something like The Witcher would fit the bill.
    limited multiplayer on the like of XBOXlive may have worked also, though NOT like LotRO Conquest.

    Also AoC had fail written all over it, even for Conan fans as Howards' lore was infact almost non-existant, any characters he did flesh out were invariably dead by the end of the story, usually at Conan's hand.
    Howard mapped out the lands of Hyboria in great detail, but not so much of the heroes and villains who populated them.
    Much to my annoyance FC also gave the Conan toon in AoC an strong American accent and a perfect set of 48 hollywood white teeth. He looked more a WWE wrestler than a usurping barbarian. Eeugh.

  • rhubarbandcustard #36 3 years ago

    I don't understand how MMO's lose money.

    Checked their website and its Ł12.99 a month or $14.99 if your in the US.

    The game was released in May 2008 and subscriber levels have only just fallen below 100,000.

    That means their monthly turnover has just fallen below a million a month.

    How the flying fuck can these people be reporting a loss of 23 MILLION DOLLARS!!!

    I just do not understand a business model where a monthly million dollar subscription can lose you money.

    Do any Fun Com Board Members have similar positions at British Banks?

  • iokthemonkey #37 3 years ago

    I think it's actually that they've lost $23 m on the previous period, not that they're in debt to the tune of $23 m.

    What it means is that this period saw their income from AoC (and other sources) FALL due to a drop-off in subscribers. So instead of making $31 million (or whatever) last quarter, this quarter they've only made $8 million (or whatever.)

    Or so is my understanding, which I'm readily willing to admit could be wide of the mark.

  • Sunyavadin #38 3 years ago

    FC HAVE managed to overcome a launch this bad once before to create a long lasting revenue stream from a product. They did it with Anarchy Online and AGAIN with AO's first expansion.
    What surprises me is that the figures for Conan subscribers may be about to, or even already have fallen BELOW AO's.

    I just hope Conan hasn't hit them for MASSIVE DAMAGE, which may lead to their being permabanned from the industry.

  • Triggerhappytel #39 3 years ago

    Shame. They should just make Speed Freaks 2 and let Conan go.

  • leftlion #40 3 years ago

    @iokthemonkey:

    There is one potential MMO that could kick world of warcraft's ass and that would be a Pokemon MMO. We just need Ninty to make it happen :)

  • iokthemonkey #41 3 years ago

    That's true. I could see that working very well - Guild Wars has a very "pokemon"-ish thing where you "capture" skills from opponents you've defeated, which you can then use...

  • iokthemonkey #42 3 years ago

    But something is clearly going wrong somewhere, Anduz. Funcom are losing money at a frightening rate and have admitted that subscriptions have dropped off quicker than they expected.

    Maybe EG shouldn't be leading with the 100,000 comment, as that's an estimate included in a later part of the story, but then again "Some Bloke You Don't Know Quits Funcom" doesn't grab the eye as much.

    EDIT: Fixed a typo.
    Edited by 1 at 24/02/09 @ 12:50

  • Uncle_Fishboy #43 3 years ago

    Did this game have boobs in it ? If so it should be rescued by the government. Every game that features nice wobbly womens boobs should be allowed to survive forever.

  • paulf #44 3 years ago

    @iokthemonkey

    you can't really ignore WoW - fair enough nothing else would do the same numbers, but thats not the point.

    Conan is in direct competition with WoW, LOTRO, and WAR (fantasy online rpgs) - judging it on it's merits, it is worse than all of these, if you are going have one sub per month it is more than likely to be wow

    AoC fails because it's an incomplete and unfinished game, this then is reflected in the user base

  • iokthemonkey #45 3 years ago

    AoC fails because it's an incomplete and unfinished game, this then is reflected in the user base

    ---

    I agree completely but wasn't going to make that point so early as otherwise the thread would have been invaded with Funcom's shills pointing out that the game is great, everything's fine and that anybody who doesn't play the wonderful AoC is clearly retarded.

    I was just pointing out that you have WoW, then every other MMO and it's the second-place race that's the interesting one.

  • iokthemonkey #46 3 years ago

    But Anduz, videogame sales are actually UP. It happens during "dark financial times" as people see them as a good, cheap investment. I don't know how or even if that translates to MMOs but - aside from WAR's "we 'ONLY' got 300K subscribers" - I haven't seen any other MMOs announcing an exodus of players or talking about server merges due to low population.

    And *IF* the 100,000 subscriptions for AoC IS true, that's absolutely shocking when you consider Funcom have made claims of over 800,000 subscribers (and "shipping" 1.2 million worldwide.) That's a phenominal drop-off, if it's true.

  • mrbandersnatch #47 3 years ago

    A LOT of people left because :

    1) They didn't want to admit failure and merge servers leaving 80%+ of the servers empty ghost-worlds....a mistake recently repeated by Mythic on WAR. Expect similarly dire drops-offs in sub numbers there.

    2) Class balance. Not graphics or anything technical, a pure and unmitigated failure to have anything resembling parity between the performance of their various classes. Forgiveable in a PvE game but in a PvP game this is the kiss of death to retaining subscribers of any but the top-tier classes in the longer terms. What is worse is that this is the one are they could have solved with marginal tweaking to numbers in underlying spreadsheets/database - one SINGLE intelligent, interested game designer would probably have helped retain 20-50K subscribers (by actually making the PvP game fun)...seems they couldn't find one.

    If mythic had addressed server numbers and class balance within the first 2 months they would probably be looking at double their current subscriber numbers.

  • paulf #48 3 years ago

    maybe the problem here is the market is saturated for fantasy mmorpgs, it's like everyone is making a cola drink because wow cola was really succesful, and what they really need to make is a tango orange - maybe KOTOR is that tasty beverage

  • iokthemonkey #49 3 years ago

    I prefer Pepsi to Coke, to be honest. :)

    And I don't think the "saturation" is the problem - LOTRO is a quality product. GW is pretty damned good too. I can't comment on WAR, but AoC was a pile of shit when I played it and I'm not going to sully myself again by trying it, as I know they still won't have fixed the issues I encountered, unless there's been a complete overhaul of the design and re-write of half the engine's functionality.

    The simple fact is AoC can't compete with WoW - or any other AAA MMO out there - because it's, frankly, shit.

  • rarebit #50 3 years ago

    most mmos are shit really. waste of time and god i've wasted a lot of time on them. its a worse habit than smoking crack.

  • iokthemonkey #51 3 years ago

    Craig Morrison just told me off on massively.com :D

  • BruntFCA #52 3 years ago

    Interesting that the comments are almost all from people that played for the first month and not the current players.

    I just re-subbed, and it loads better. PvP gear, system rewards, building keeps, armorsmiths etc to make better gears. New zones, great graphics, and a new itemization patch in the works. The games also got a new director. From what I can see I don't think that report is on the ball, subs are going *up* if anything.

    The new dude thats in charge, is the guy from AO, so he has tons of experience. Also rememebr EVE - online as gonna be floptastic, but now has about 250,000 subs and the largest online persistant Universe with more expansions on the way.

    Another positive is that high end graphics card are as cheap as chips now. Come and try it, I doubt you'll rush to go back to generic Anima Manga type graphics.

  • iokthemonkey #53 3 years ago

    But why should Funcom be congratulated for fixing the issues and problems they themselves created?

    It really doesn't matter if the game is "better" now. It should have been "better" at launch. The point is that the initial wave of subscribers were mislead over the game's content and what we were buying, so it's not really surprising that people who were part of that won't give it a second chance.

    For me the problems were a lot deeper though. The game world is hugely restrictive (and this is coming from a GW player), the combat wasn't that interesting and there are just too many fundamental flaws in the way it's put together to make it worth playing, especially when there are many superior MMOs out there.

  • 1simen1 #54 3 years ago

    Monkeyboy, as usuall you are wrong.

    Yes, off course it matters how the game stands today. Launch conditions in may 08 are irrelevant to gamers in soon march 2009.

    You bought a game that wasn't polished at launch. Get over it.

    The arguments you use as to why the game is "shite", is your opinion not fact. If you go to the official forums you will find that most will disagree with you, you will find someone agreeing with you aswell.
    Why they still play a game they don't like is beyond me.

    Here we are, what is it now? 6 months since you quit and you are still bitching in every AOC thread on Eurogamer. Why not play the game you like LOTR Online instead. I hear it's a solid game if you are into Tolkien.
    Edited by 1 at 28/02/09 @ 15:02

  • iokthemonkey #55 3 years ago

    Have you played AoC yet, 1semen1?

  • 1simen1 #56 3 years ago

    Monkeyrude, Nope, no time i'm working to much.

    But i still follow the game because of it's potential and read patch notes and the existing players reactions to the changes and content add ons.

    I take it you haven't played since august?
    Like many others here you trash the game for problems that were there when you played, but is long gone now...

  • iokthemonkey #57 3 years ago

    So you haven't played AoC yet?