Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Elite Dangerous Developer Frontier Is Planning Layoffs As Part Of An Effort To Return To Profitabili
System
Member UncommonPosts: 12,599
Elite Dangerous Developer Frontier Is Planning Layoffs As Part Of An Effort To Return To Profitability | MMORPG.com
Frontier is planning on laying off employees as part of an effort to 'reshape Frontier' following disappointing financial performance, according to a new report.
Comments
Frankly, their last year+ of updates has been disappointing.
I do hope they find a solution though.
The initial game was great with the promise of extra content on the horizon but to date and especially in the last couple of years, most of the content added has been very shallow and not very well implemented.
as an example, all variants of Missions after a while were as boring as hell, which is to be expected when its basically just a random mission generator, rather than meaningful content. Don't get me wrong there is a place for this sort of content but it shouldn't just be that content and as mitceh616 stated, most of the enjoyable content was aimed at the few rather than the many.
I always thought that ED should have either been a single player game, perhaps with some dynamic arching story line and the missions to go along with it, or an MMO, with
mmo type missions and content.
In the end, it was/is neither and the updates kind of reflect this
tl;dr: They had a significant operating loss in FY23, but it was non-cash intangible asset impairment — that is, the loss from shuttering Foundry, which was significant and entirely responsible for the operating loss. Otherwise, they're mostly fine. "Return to profitability" isn't correct, they otherwise would have been profitable and likely will be next year regardless of any changes made, excluding the F1 game they mention doing exceptionally bad I suppose.
It's also naive of gamers to immediately think any employee cuts will be developers. They increased R&D spending by a significant amount in FY23, good chance they'll cut administrative staff instead.
If I had to guess, as they do not say outright, it's Jurassic World Evolution 2 as of their latest fiscal statement.
That being said if they ever make a VR HMD that is worth the $1k+ they want to charge for them I'd probably live in this game space trucking all day long.
I recall in one office I worked for word came down that 2/3 rds of the staff was being rif'd. Speculation ran wild on how many, (15 initially discussed), who might survive and how many of each job function might survive.
When the day came I had no false illusions of being retained seeing as I was the project manager with no useful skills
The company ended up only retaining their 6 most competent developers and the office/dev manager, (who could also test) and no one else.
They ran with that team size for several years supporting the product as it aged out, with only the two most capable devs being retained by the firm (Alcatel Lucent it's called these days) who were moved to other projects.
As far as I can tell on LinkedIn they both still work there today, over 20 years now since the sacking.
No regrets though, as such often happens my leaving back then lead to much greater success in my career than I ever would have obtained had I stayed in that same small team.
Everything for a reason.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
What they needed was more non-spaceship type things to do, like dungeons and old cities on planet surfaces to explore.
Yes rather then regular updates, story, communication and things to make players stay or return . Just keep firing people till no one is left! Amazing business model there!
Imagine where the game could of been today, if they had kept at it? that's the sad part