Following the Age of Conan bloodbath, Funcom doubled down on ambition with The Secret World - an MMO where every conspiracy theory was real and players wielded supernatural powers against ancient evils. The concept originated as Cabal in 2002, set in the 1920s with heavy Lovecraft influences, but development stalled when the team was reassigned to Dreamfall. 1

Work resumed in earnest in 2006 with Ragnar Tørnquist leading the charge, bringing veterans from Dreamfall, Age of Conan, and Anarchy Online to create something genuinely revolutionary. The pitch was irresistible: a modern-day setting where the Illuminati, Templars, and Dragons battled occult threats across a classless, skill-based progression system. No levels, no traditional fantasy races, just pure narrative-driven gameplay. 2 3

By 2008, Funcom had 70 people working on the project across studios in Oslo, Montreal, and Beijing. Beta weekends in May-June 2011 attracted an impressive 750,000 sign-ups, suggesting massive pent-up demand for something different in the MMO space. The game promised to launch April 2012, then slipped to June “for polish”. 4 5 6

at least the art was pretty! :3

The CEO Vote of Confidence (July 2012)

Launch week delivered a bonus plot twist straight out of a conspiracy thriller: CEO Trond Arne Aas resigned on July 2, 2012—literally the day before Funcom’s earnings call—after attempting to dump 1.5 million shares and successfully selling 650,000. 7 8

The timing was chef’s kiss perfect corporate malfeasance. By stepping down, Aas was removed from Funcom’s “primary insider list,” allowing him to trade stock without public reporting requirements on the Oslo Stock Exchange. When his sales became public knowledge, Funcom’s stock price tanked harder than their game launches. 8

Norwegian regulators launched an insider trading investigation that would drag on for years. Aas claimed he had “no knowledge of The Secret World’s disappointing sales” when he resigned, but the timing spoke louder than corporate PR statements. Nothing says “confidence in our product” like the CEO bailing with a golden parachute hours before launch TROLOLOL

The Wrong Kind of Flashy Tech

The Secret World ran on Funcom’s legacy Dreamworld Engine—the same infrastructure that powered Anarchy Online and Age of Conan—but with a critical design flaw that defined the entire experience: the UI was hard-coded in Adobe Flash. 2

This wasn’t just a questionable tech choice; it was a catastrophic one. Flash-based interfaces were notoriously unstable, resource-hungry, and already deprecated by major browsers when TSW launched. Players experienced constant UI crashes, memory leaks, and performance issues that made basic gameplay frustrating. 9

Dreamworld’s graphics team simultaneously partnered with NVIDIA to debut DirectX 11 tessellation; TSW was marketed as “the first MMO with full DX11 support,” yet most players disabled it to prevent the increased number of crashes and claw back frames. Shiny normals couldn’t fix their in-house engine issues nor hide a UI that ran like a MySpace widget. LMAOOOOO

Promised “Issue” Cadence… Then Silence

Funcom marketed TSW with promises of regular content updates called “Issues”—monthly story expansions that would keep the narrative flowing. The vision was ambitious: a living world where player actions shaped an ongoing conspiracy narrative through integrated ARG elements. 11

The reality? Content drought. After launch, promised updates slowed to a crawl. Community engagement, so crucial for a story-driven MMO, withered as developers went radio silent on forums. Players who’d invested in the premise of an evolving narrative found themselves stuck in the same zones for months, waiting for content that arrived sporadically if at all.

This pattern of over-promising and under-delivering had become Funcom’s signature move, but TSW’s narrative focus made the broken promises especially damaging. When your entire value proposition is storytelling, going silent on story updates is corporate suicide.

What Even Is This End-Game You Speak Of?

TSW’s endgame content was sparse and repetitive, focusing on a handful of high-level dungeons and PvP zones that failed to retain players long-term. The innovative skill system, while conceptually interesting, led to cookie-cutter builds as players optimized for the limited viable content. 12

Combat felt clunky and unresponsive—a recurring theme in Funcom games—while the faction system (Illuminati, Templars, Dragons) had little meaningful impact on gameplay beyond cosmetic differences. Players hit the skill ceiling and found… nothing particularly engaging waiting for them.

The game’s tone also worked against broad appeal. TSW aimed for mature, sophisticated storytelling but often came across as pretentious rather than profound. Forum discussions devolved into arguments over whether the game was “too smart for MMO players” or simply poorly executed. 13

The Dumbed-Down Reboot (2017)

By 2017, with TSW hemorrhaging players and revenue, Funcom made a desperate pivot: Secret World Legends, a free-to-play “reboot” that promised to fix everything wrong with the original. 14

Instead of addressing core issues, SWL simplified the skill system, added aggressive monetization, and locked previously free content behind paywalls. The reboot alienated existing players while failing to attract significant new audiences. As one player noted: “Essentially the game failed again. The Free to Play model they implemented is too mean, gear progression is too grindy”. 15

Funcom’s monetization strategy became particularly egregious, featuring fluctuating prices and content restrictions that sparked community backlash. Players reported “fluctuating and manipulative pricing in the bazaar” and complained about “locking of content limiting creativity and immersion”. Forum discussions turned toxic as veterans felt betrayed by what they saw as a cash-grab rather than genuine improvement. 16

Lessons Still Unlearned

The Secret World proved Funcom could craft genuinely innovative concepts and unforgettable atmospheric storytelling. The game’s investigation missions, ARG integration, and modern occult setting were genuinely unique in the MMO space. 17

But innovation meant nothing when paired with technical incompetence, broken promises, and executive corruption. The Flash-based UI alone would have killed most games, but TSW died from a thousand cuts: CEO insider trading scandals, content droughts, aggressive monetization, and the same pattern of over-promise-under-deliver that defined Funcom’s entire catalog.

Secret World Legends proved they learned nothing from the original’s failure. Rather than fix fundamental issues, they doubled down on monetization while alienating their most passionate fans. By 2019, SWL was maintained by a skeleton crew, kept alive mostly by dedicated role-players who’d invested too much time to quit. 18

The cycle was complete: snag interesting IP concept, promise revolutionary gameplay, ship broken product, blame external factors, pivot to aggressive monetization, repeat. Sound familiar, Dune: Awakening players? This slow fade into monetized obscurity is Funcom’s true signature move.

Next up: Part II digs into Dune: Awakening—where spice isn’t the only thing that must flow, and corporate incompetence flows just as freely :333