Nine Employees Laid Off The EVE Frontier Development Team

I'm a little late to the news but I wasn't really so anxious to write the post. Last Wednesday Vertical Slice reported on layoffs occurring in the EVE Frontier development team. The article provided links to four employees but that was from the western press. The Icelandic publication Visir.is provided more details.

Nine full-time positions were cut at Fenris Creations following a review of the organization for the development of the game Eve Frontier. In a written response to the press office, Eyrún Jónsdóttir, managing director of Fenris Games Publishing, says that this will not affect any other games or Fenris' operations. 

"Following a review of the development structure for EVE Frontier, we have made changes to the team working on the game. Unfortunately, these changes have resulted in the layoff of 9 full-time positions. We regret having to make this decision and will do our best to support those affected," Eyrún says in her written response.

It also states that the decision has no impact on Fenris' other games or operations and that they do not intend to provide further information at this time.

I knew that the Frontier team is small so I sent Gemini to find out just how small. The figure I got back was 40-60. Either way, 9 people is a rather large chuck to lose in one day. Vertical Slice published more of the response it received.

"Fenris Creations can confirm that we are making changes to the EVE Frontier development team as part of a review of the project's priorities, structure and development plans. Regrettably, these changes include a reduction in roles. We recognise the impact on our colleagues and are committed to supporting those affected with care and respect," reads the statement.

"EVE Frontier remains in active development. The changes are intended to establish a more focused development structure and support the project's long-term ambitions. These changes were proposed by the EVE Frontier leadership team, who believe a more focused development structure will better serve the project. They are specific to EVE Frontier, rather than part of a broader company-wide restructuring. Our statement at the time of independence reflected our plans at that point, with these subsequent decisions taken in response to the project's development needs."

From what I've seen of the project my ongoing assumption is that Fenris wants to spend as little money maintaining Frontier after the commercial release as possible. I should have figured that was the case during development as well.