Now it’s up to Tencent. Funcom will do as they are told.
I really have enjoyed CE. I would hard pass on a UE5 version of CE unless they hired an exceptionally skilled UE5 dev team. I tried dune to support Funcom, however that game has major issues. People want UE5 for the cool graphics, but unless you are a really really skilled in UE5, it usually turns out like shit.
Will they though? I’m pretty sure they told FC to make money.
And they must be making at least some or Tencent would have closed their doors. We know there were layoffs. Tencent is about money. If you don’t make it, bad stuff hapoens.
Definitely said this.
Oh wow….this is biting considering the end result.
“Tencent has also played a greater role in steering Norwegian studio Funcom, with the Chinese firm urging the developer to focus on Dune: Awakening rather than other projects.
“When Tencent came in, they said: ‘Look, you’re spreading your attention.’ You have a great IP that you’ve secured, you should really focus on that and drop the other things,” Funcom CEO Rui Casais explained.”
Well all of that focus turned the Dune player count into the the same as Conan (for PC) and they have nothing to earn continual revenue on with Dune. So basically Conan is still keeping the lights on at Funcom while the Dune influx (and a million game launch is a big deal don’t get me wrong) probably got the creditors off their back. Hopefully there is meat on the bone to continue with console release because this is the only thing that may bring an additional bump but I doubt it considering the momentum is gone.
Great find! Here’s a link to the source:
That, sadly, supports the “It’s Tencents fault” narrative. The oh-so-smart-business-guys f’ed it up once again.
Maybe they misunderstand Funcom’s focus. In my view, the company survives in a corner that bigger game companies don’t touch. Niche games for a niche audience. Cookie cutter, one size fits all solutions don’t work for improving that kind of business. What works for McDonalds doesn’t have to work for the local family eatery or the five star restaurant, and vice versa. Neither the customers nor the employees behave the same.
Yes, but if we can conserve in this new game all items we bought on bazzar and DLC.
in any case, we need a lot more just 5 style for base game constructions.
I feel I definitely should have been paying better attention to multiple news sources but what tipped me off was this video by Bellular. Mentioned Tencent/FC and I went looking for the article as a result.
Illuminating.
It’s maddening. They had the building blocks to make something work with different games as revenue streams. CE would fuel itself and put in % to the corporate overhead. Dune could have done it as well….but this push to just focus on one thing at a time…..ouch.
Even without all the context it explains A LOT.
it also has thralls/followers I can play adventurer party with ?
Not going to pretend I know for sure one way or the other how it would have worked out otherwise but I can say the CE servers got a decent influx of former Dune players, people who liked Dune but simply got to the end of it with nothing left to do, who might have stuck around longer in CE if it hadn’t been in such neglected shape.
Bullet meet foot perhaps. At least to an extent.
I 100% agree on your said!
It’s not as if Funcom has a stellar track record either. Join the greedy bluntness of Tencent and the famous incompetence of Funcom, and you undestand why we are where we are.
It’s not a Tencent is to blame vs a Funcom is to blame situation.
Both contributed with their own bit.
Furthermore, that sould concern the player exactly 0%.
Who is to blame, who isn’t… Unless you are a shareholde, that doesn’t matter
You, as a player, deal with the end product. It’s either a good, mediocre or terrible product. Conan is between good and mediocre, in my opinion. Good ideas, mediocre implementation.
I couldn’t care less about who has the lion share of the responsabiity for the siruation, and neither should you.
One thing that should be kept is the ability to run private servers and play single player. What killed any interest in Dune (and Fallout 76 before that) for me was the “official online only” policy.
Yes and no. The realization that Tencent may be to blame here (not alone, but more than Funcom) also poisons other Tencent owned games for me, for example.
That’s up to you. All big companies have a wide portfolio. We might find some good studios mixed with bad ones. It depends on how skilled you are at navigating the corporate ocean. One thing is sure, if your product is good, makes players happy and brings renevue to the investors, you won’t have the big brother breathing at your neck so tightly.
But if you break the game at every major update, you can bet they’ll be all over you.
There’s a point, at least for me, where watching and analyzing both the industry as a whole and individual companies navigate the reality of creating fantasy, so to speak, their missteps and triumphs along the way, becomes more entertaining than the games they make.
I didn’t want it to be that way but here we are.
I can understand, and it’s perfectly legitimate but honestly, I don’t give a rat’s ass about it.
All I want are good games. I don’t care how they are made, who makes them, which tools are used, etc. Zero, nada! 
I care about the games themselves. That’s it.