Elite: Dangerous developer sees lay-offs as Kickstarter campaign rolls on

Elite: Dangerous developer Frontier Development has let go of 14 staff in an alleged move to restructure ahead of new projects. It comes as David Braben's Kickstarter campaign approaches the £800,000 mark. Get the details below.

Eurogamer reports that the Cambridge studio let go of 14 of its 223 staff last week. At the time of writing, the Elite: Dangerous Kickstarter sits at £780,562 pledged of its £1,250,000 goal, across 16,048 backers. 18 days of funding remain.

Speaking with the site, Frontier's managing director David Walsh said of the redundancies, "Frontier regretfully has given a total of 14 people (from a staff of 233) notice that their roles are redundant, across art (9), animation (3) and audio (2) disciplines. This is due to the changing mix of skills requirements for our current and future projects - it is not a reflection on the company's prospects, which remain healthy.

“Once we took the decision to make the roles redundant, we felt it was better that the affected people knew ASAP so they can plan any further expenditure over the Christmas period accordingly and focus on their search for new roles as soon as possible. We have provided redundancy arrangements in excess of the minimum.

“We are actively recruiting to shift the balance of skills we have within the company to enable us to deliver the set of projects currently in development."

Recently VG247's Pat Garratt expressed concern over a string of Kickstarter UK campaigns, including Elite: Dangerous and the slowing Godus from Peter Molyneux's new studio 22 Cans.

Just last week we saw Dizzy Returns from The Oliver Twins fail to meet its funding goal of £350,000, a sum many have called out as being both unrealistic and unreasonable.

What's your take on Kickstarter UK's high-profile campaigns? Let us know below.