The Secret World has Christmas success after sub-drop
That's the good news.
Dropping the default Secret World subscription in December but not the cost of the game helped, a lot. The MMO sold more than 70,000 copies in the last four weeks.
Funcom said that represented a 30 per cent increase in the MMO's total sales. Popping that into my fixed (with your help) calculator, that puts The Secret World's grand total at just over 300,000 sales.
In August, Funcom said The Secret World had sold over 200,000 copies.
Removing the base subscription fee also boosted Secret World player activity by 400 per cent, apparently.
Note that the Secret World didn't turn free-to-play. You buy the game and play for free, and paid-for DLC content packs will be added over time. There's an option to subscribe still, too.
News of The Secret World's encouraging success comes as Funcom announces restructuring of the company as a whole. We had known this was coming.
Besides supporting Anarchy Online, Age of Conan and The Secret World, Funcom will concentrate on building "smaller high quality MMO games". Lego Minifigures will be the first example of this.
By closing and consolidating offices around the world (no word on specifics yet - let us know if this affects you), Funcom hopes to make its business smaller and leaner. There should be less mega-bucks bets like The Secret World to go awry.
That Age of Conan launch event seems like a long time ago now.