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Elite Dangerous studio Frontier Developments announce layoffs and “organisational review"Following “a period of disappointing financial performance”
Following “a period of disappointing financial performance”
Image credit:Frontier Developments
Image credit:Frontier Developments
Frontier Developments have announced that they’ll be undertaking an “organisationl review” of the company after “disappointing financial performance and more challenging industry conditions”. The news came yesterday in anoteto investors, signalling yet another wave of industry layoffs.
In their most recentFY23 financial reportfrom 13th September 2023, Frontier stated they’d had “lower than expected initial sales” ofF1 Manager 2023, and also confirmed the closure of their third-party publishing arm, Frontier Foundry “following the completion of a strategic review”. Just this year, Frontier Foundry were responsible for publishing the likes of space adventureDeliver Us Mars, sci-fi survival ‘em upStranded Alien Dawnand WW1 RTSThe Great War: Western Front, and their successful collaboration with Complex Games on the excellentWarhammer 40K: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunterseventually led Frontier toacquirethe studio in November 2022.
All this comes ahead of the release of Frontier’s upcoming Warhammer RTSAge Of Sigmar: Realms Of Ruin, which releases on November 17th next month. They seem optimistic(-ish) about it in their note to investors, and add that their existing portfolio “continues to perform in line with expectations”.
Still, with this kind of review hanging over it, you can’t help but feel like there’s just a smidge of extra pressure on it to be successful, especially given it’s their only major new release that currently seems to be in the pipeline. I’m no business analyst, but given how much games cost to make these days (see Paradox’s recentwriting off of $22mjust to cover the disappointing performance ofThe Lamplighters League), I worry what a similarly-sized flop would mean for Frontier’s future.
It’s been a pretty grim couple of weeks (months? Entire year?) for the video games industry between the recently announced layoffs atCreative Assembly,Team17,Epic Games, and the Epic-ownedBandcamp- and that’s to say nothing of all the other major layoffs and closures announced at other studios from earlier in the year. CD Projekt staff recentlyformed a unionin the wake of some of these larger layoffs, and have encouraged devs across the industry to do the same.
