The Video Game Layoffs Continue, This Time at F1 Manager Developer Frontier

ign.com:

2023 continues to be an extremely difficult year for the video game development industry, with yet another wave of layoffs announced.

This time, UK studio Frontier Developments has announced an organisational review of the business that includes a wave of redundancies, subject to consultation. A spokesperson for Frontier told IGN this morning that it was unable to share how many people will be affected as the review is not yet concluded.

Frontier Developments is the veteran Cambridge-based studio behind 2014’s space sim Elite: Dangerous, Microsoft’s Zoo Tycoon, Planet Coaster, and the Jurassic World Evolution games. In recent years, it’s released two F1 Manager games, with real-time strategy game Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin due out in November. Frontier also published games from external developers under its Frontier Foundry label, including Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters, Deliver Us Mars, and FAR: Changing Tides.

In January, Frontier said it planned to lower its original sales expectations for the fiscal years of 2023 and 2024 after its games underperformed during the 2022 holiday season. F1 Manager 2022, which launched in August 2022, was singled out, with "lower than expected" sales of 600,000 across console and PC. At the time, Frontier said there was "increased player price sensitivity" amid larger concerns of a global economic recession.

Then, in June, Frontier announced the closure of its Frontier Foundry subsidiary and a plan to concentrate on its own universe of curated games, admitting to "disappointing" financial performance across its third-party portfolio.

F1 Manager 2023 launched in July but is thought to have similarly underperformed. Now, in a new trading update, Frontier said it had