CCP's Office Shuffle, Year End Edition

A story I watched over the course of 2015 is the status of CCP's offices. Closing offices, like closing servers, is a sign of weakness for a game company. In 2014, CCP closed the San Francisco office in August and lost two "C" level executives, Chief Marketing Officer David Reid and Chief Financial Officer Joe Gallo. In 2015, CCP had three non-negotiable leases up for renewal, in Iceland (July), the UK (July), and China (October). So since I wrote about the issue throughout the year, I thought I should write one final post looking back at the year.

CCP Offices At The Beginning Of The Year

Reykjavik - CCP's world headquarters and the home of the EVE Online development team, I don't think anyone really expected a move from its current home in 2015. Yet, CCP managed to make some news with an announcement that the company would move to the science park currently under development on the campus of the University of Iceland. At a signing ceremony in June, CCP's CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson stated:

"With these plans is to begin a new chapter in the activities of CCP in Iceland, where we foresee further strengthen our successful cooperation with the academic and creative industries in this country. Ahead are exciting times for the company and I am convinced that great opportunities are implied in the cooperation and development plans envisaged in the Science Park Vatnsmýrin development activities, research and innovation."

As of the time of this post, I do not have a date for the move to the new facilities.

United Kingdom - In April, CCP officially transferred the headquarters of its U.K. operations from its Slough office 20 miles outside of London to the Newcastle studio in Gateshead. I believe the Slough location was probably just an office, if not a post office box. But CCP will have a second address in the U.K. again soon, as the press release announcing the hiring of Maria Sayans as the new Chief Customer Officer included the information that she would oversee the opening of a new London office.

Shanghai - No news came out of China in 2015 on the real estate front. which probably means that the studio did not move. Closing the facility doesn't seem likely as CCP Shanghai is not only the home of the DUST 514 development team, but the virtual reality developers who created EVE: Gunjack as well. With CCP banking so heavily on virtual reality, I don't see the game maker discarding such an asset.

Atlanta - According to CCP's financial documents, no leases were set to expire until November 2022, but the sale of White Wolf to Paradox in October brought the Atlanta facility to the forefront of my attention. But the days of CCP Atlanta only housing White Wolf and some assorted staff like CCP Manifest ended sometime last year. Atlanta is the home of CCP's VR Labs, which was announced at Fanfest in March. CCP Manifest tweeted out on 2 November that the Atlanta office would remain open.

Okay, so not the most scintillating of posts. As a blogger who is not chasing hits, I can come back to a subject and do a follow-up. Some stories do deserve them, even when they do not contain bad news. Then again, maybe that is when stories deserve a follow-up post the most.