In our Overthinking roundtable last week, MOP’s Andy McAdams posted as one of his “unpopular MMORPG opinions” the assertion that “Funcom is one of the best MMO studios making games today.” I’m not entirely sure it’s such a wild claim, though, as Funcom’s first quarter financials released today, proving once again that it’s possible for a company on the brink of collapse to completely turn it all around with a string of successful online games.
According to the investor report, Funcom’s revenue was up 117% for Q1 2019 as compared to Q1 2018, in spite of the fact that the company released no new games in that period. That’s not as huge as it sounds, since Q1 2018 itself marked a relatively low point for the studio in the last couple of years, and it’s a drop of nearly 30% since fourth quarter of last year, but of course Funcom is on the verge of launching Conan Unconquered next week, which’ll likely pump things up next round.
On the MMO front, Funcom recapped its activities in Age of Conan, Anarchy Online, and Secret World Legends, with plans for all three in the next year: the Onslaught mode for AoC and anniversary events for AO and SWL.
The company is still touting seven new games and 15 total active projects, including the DUNE project previously covered.
