F1 Manager developer accused of “dehumanizing” layoffs and mismanagement
F1 Manager developer Frontier has been accused of “dehumanizing” layoffs and mismanagement by current and former employees.
videogames.si.com
Other sources reiterated how F1 Manager was a massive flop for the company, in part due to costly licenses. One Frontier employee told GLHF that the wrong management expectations were the most important point about the entire issue, because it didn’t just impact the F1 Manager project – this seems to be a systemic problem.
That’s actually been the biggest issue seen across multiple titles: uncontrollable spending, poor decisions (such as what licenses we pay for, games we make, and what we fund), and then trying to offset it with unrealistic sales expectations, which anyone internally could tell you even early on that we’d never be able to hit.”
Falcini confirmed that impression, saying that “forecasts seemed absurd”, though she couldn’t share any specifics.
F1 Manager 2022 actually sold well for such a niche title, “but the spend on making the game and securing the licenses was so high that we never stood a chance at actually making the money back.”
According to Frontier’s trade update from June 2023 F1 Manager 2022 sold “over 800,000 units in its first nine months.”
Support for the debut title of the series was dropped early “to move onto F1 Manager 2023, which was all the updates they wished they could have made to the first game and then some new features, but sadly not the features anyone wanted because of time.
“The reality is, it was all down to the dev-cycle. The exec team wanted F1 Manager 2023 released with Silverstone [coinciding with the Formula 1 British Grand Prix].”
Management allegedly blamed the workers for missing the sales target: “Anyone could have told you that F1 Manager 2023 wasn’t going to sell as well as F1 Manager 2022.”
Responding to our request for comment, Frontier admitted that “sales of our F1 Manager franchise have, to date, been lower than we had expected. [...] It should also be noted that F1 Manager 2023 now features in Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription service from October 2023, resulting in additional revenue for the franchise.”
However, the company denied all allegations of management blaming employees for a lack of sales: “We have not blamed employees for the under-performance in sales – we value the contributions of our colleagues immensely and stand by their terrific work. Our teams have developed and published two great games that each performed well critically (F1 Manager 2022 and 2023).”
“Internal communications said there was no ‘placing blame’,” Falcini told GLHF, “but went on to only criticize marketing, which the senior team had forced to make a number of decisions against their better judgment.”