Elite: Dangerous studio Frontier hit with redundancies

Elite: Dangerous Hydroponic Stamford

Frontier Developments will make 15 positions redundant, the studio announced today. Following last year's Elite: Dangerous launch, and this week's announcement of an impending Coaster Park Tycoon game, the studio announced in an investor's update that it will "re-focus" its development activities away from its Nova Scotia office towards its Cambridge studio.

"Development roles are being moved from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Cambridge, and the overall staffing mix will be changed to match the needs of these two projects," the announcement read.

"15 content creation roles have been made redundant in Cambridge (from 281 total headcount), while Frontier continues to recruit in areas such as game and technology programming, server and web front end development."

The news follows the announcement of Coaster Park Tycoon earlier this week, which the studio intends to "run as a second franchise alongside continued development of its existing self-published Elite: Dangerous title".

While Elite: Dangerous launched to favourable reviews last month, it was not immune to controversy: the studio's eleventh hour decision to remove offline play resulted in many players demanding, and then receiving, a refund. The refund policy was later amended.

Shaun Prescott

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.