Funcom raided and charged for fraud

Nyx

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In the early morning funcom (The Longest Journey, Age of Conan, The Secret World) was raided, all employees sent home and the company is now charged with fraud. In the passing hours equipment has been removed from Funcom's offices by the authorities.
http://www.newsinenglish.no/2014/01/29/economic-crime-unit-raids-funcom/

(on a side note: I can understand most of this but could anyone with a little more knowledge of this explain to me the point of the authorities removing the equipment from their offices?)
 
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Equipment is always taken to prevent wipe of possible data evidence on discs and other media.

All I can say is ff funcom advertised something as free2play, but charged for play, then it's a fraud. "Free" doesn't mean "milk-them", at least according to dictionary. I'm saying that for years, noone listens.
But on the same site it says Funcom was charged with breaching disclosure requirements related to the game The Secret World. Never heard of that game, so dunno.
 
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Equipment is always taken to prevent wipe of possible data evidence on discs and other media.

Other than that dunno. If funcom advertised something as free2play, but charged for play, then it's a fraud. "Free" doesn't mean "fraud", at least according to dictionary. I'm saying that for years, noone listens.

Well, that makes sense x)

They aren't charged because of advertising it as f2p, the charges are due to information they gave pre-launch compared to launch and a few months later...stock market related stuff
 
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Joxer has harsh opinions on most topics NyxVampiria. Especially on F2P games^^

He is right about the authorities removing the equipment from their offices. Everything will be looked at no matter how small it is. You would be surprised by the software they have to scan hard drives.

As for Funcom it's typical in business were people lie in there books. They just happened to get caught. Now comes a lengthy court case were they get fined and somebody becomes the scapegoat.

Just look at this wiki list for examples-

Link-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporate_collapses_and_scandals
 
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Well, they did mess up big time with pretty much all of their MMOs, so I've been wondering how they could stay afloat. It's not exactly small budget games we're talking about.
 
Well, they did mess up big time with pretty much all of their MMOs, so I've been wondering how they could stay afloat. It's not exactly small budget games we're talking about.

well, mess up how? making a sucky MMO is not reasons for law enforcement to raid your offices (if that was so, we'd need to triple the size of law enforcement agencies). In this case, even if their MMOs were the best perfectly made MMOs, they could still be raided and charged if they lied in their statements to investors and the public.
I wonder if this means The Secret World is going offline, after all, files could be stored in those servers so they could be included in raid?

This part is interesting…
Between the start of the year and January 7, Funcom shares surged 160 percent, then fell 21 percent. At the time, chief executive Ole H Schreiner had no explanation for the rollercoaster ride: ”There’s no information we’ve come across recently which would indicate this increase, but obviously, it isn’t my job to speculate on this here.”
That is very unusual for a stock to go 160% in one week without a specific reason. Most probably when the stock is 'unfrozen' it'll go drastically down.
 
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well, mess up how? making a sucky MMO is not reasons for law enforcement to raid your offices (if that was so, we'd need to triple the size of law enforcement agencies). In this case, even if their MMOs were the best perfectly made MMOs, they could still be raided and charged if they lied in their statements to investors and the public.
I wonder if this means The Secret World is going offline, after all, files could be stored in those servers so they could be included in raid?

Ehm, no - I didn't say it was the reason for the raid.

I said they must have lost a huge amount of money making one expensive failure after the other.
 
Going by the article, they raided Funcom office because they suspect "insider information" being the cause of the peak and decline of their stockmaker index a bit before and after The Secret World release.

The problem with this is that anyone playing the beta would have known the state of The Secret World and that it was going to crash once released...
 
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Not so much the state of it, but the design of it.

It was CLEARLY not a game for the mainstream - and yet they expected it to be played by the mainstream.
 
I still think the combat is crap personally. I actually liked the rest of the design, although some puzzles really require the use of the in-game browser.
 
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I still think the combat is crap personally. I actually liked the rest of the design, although some puzzles really require the use of the in-game browser.

You don't have to use the in-game browser.

Combat is indeed crap, but the rest of the game is fantastic until you exhaust content.

But again, it was never going to be for the mainstream/casual player. How they thought it would be a massive hit, I'll never know.
 
You don't have to use the in-game browser.

I can not solve music puzzle with letter notation, I have no idea what they mean I only did music using the classic modern notation. So I had to use the in-game browser to find out how the hell that worked (I suspect that you could alt-tab too, but the game came with a browser so...).
 
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I can not solve music puzzle with letter notation, I have no idea what they mean I only did music using the classic modern notation. So I had to use the in-game browser to find out how the hell that worked (I suspect that you could alt-tab too, but the game came with a browser so…).

You can alt-tab, ask for help, use a tablet, etc.

The in-game browser is terrible, so I never used it much.
 
You can alt-tab, ask for help, use a tablet, etc.

The in-game browser is terrible, so I never used it much.

I agree that it was terrible...
 
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Here are two articles with more information. Seems they might have rigged the account books , and they are accused of insider trading.
In addition to the charges, Økokrim reckon there’s a possibility that the financial documentation covering the period in question might not have been correctly maintained. It’s all troubling news for the already troubled developer, which has been shrinking its international operations and losing employees, including long-time creative engine, Ragnar Tørnquist.
1.http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/01/29/funcom-charged-over-possible-financial-infringements/
2.http://www.newsweb.no/newsweb/searc...Only=true&searchCriteria.osloMarketOnly=false
 
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