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Area Development - Site Selection, Facility Planning and Workforce Development

Online Game Portal Designer, Curse Inc., Relocates Headquarters-Operations To Huntsville, Alabama

06/26/2013
An online game portal producer, Curse Inc. plans to relocate its corporate headquarters and content team to Huntsville, Alabama, creating 20 jobs. Currently based in San Francisco, California, the company provides editorials, videos, wikis, databases, forums, add-ons, blogs, and guild website hosting for massively multiplayer online gamers.

“We were looking for a place that was friendly and beneficial to our employees and our company,” said Curse CEO and founder Hubert Thieblot. “Huntsville provided that. In addition to being a friendly environment for our company, we have been really pleased with the amount of high-quality talent in the area.”

After the full relocation, 40 people will be working in the new corporate headquarters in Huntsville. The accounting and administration functions of Curse will remain in San Francisco. Curse has grown at a rate of more than 50 percent a year for the past four years, the Alabama Department of Commerce said.

“For the synergy of our team, we decided development and content needed to be in the same place,” said Curse Vice President of Finance Brandon Byrne. “We considered Las Vegas, Seattle, Boulder and Los Angeles. As an afterthought, we reached out to the Chamber in Huntsville.”

“I did an analysis for all of those places under consideration for corporate tax rates, the availability of talent, the cost of living and employee taxes,” Byrne said. “As it turned out, Huntsville was very competitive.”

“Jobs such as these not only reflect a new technology and important sector for our state, but are a critical step in the implementation of our economic development plan Accelerate Alabama,” said Alabama Department of Commerce Secretary Greg Canfield. ”These are type of jobs we are working to attract to the state and today’s announcement is a sign that our plan is working.”

Chip Cherry, Huntsville-Madison County Chamber of Commerce Chief Executive Officer said the project is a great example of how local expertise in modeling and simulation can be leveraged to attract new industry. “The location of Curse’s headquarters to our area represents a win for our community on many levels,” Cherry said. “This diversification into a growing industry sector adds a new dimension to our growing creative class in the downtown business community.”

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