Funcom closing Beijing studio, laying off staff in Montreal and North Carolina
Rejigging AO, AOC, TSW live teams to all be under one roof.
Funcom Beijing, which did lots of art and animation for The Secret World, will be closed down this year, Funcom has announced.
It's all part of the restructuring plan Funcom revealed after The Secret World initially flopped, forcing its maker to think about how it wants to do business in the future. The answer was smaller online titles that are quicker to make and cost less.
The restructuring also means the live teams for Anarchy Online, Age of Conan and The Secret World will all be moved under one roof - a roof in Raleigh, North Carolina, in America.
The bulk of the live teams were up in Montreal, in Canada, Funcom told me this afternoon. By leaving, they free up the Montreal studio to work on as yet unannounced projects for tablet and mobile platforms. The team will also keep chipping away at the proprietary Dreamworld game engine.
The Norwegian Funcom office is made up of marketing, administration and some operations people, I'm told. There's some development going on there for the Lego Minifigures game, too.
All of this jiggly-jiggling means more job losses, unfortunately. There will be lay-offs at the Montreal studio and the Raleigh North Carolina studio.
Funcom dropped the default subscription fee for The Secret World in December, and in doing so revitalised the MMO's prospects. Which is nice, because The Secret World is nice.