Frontier Developments

Frontier Developments plc is a British video game developer founded by David Braben in January 1994¹ and based at the Cambridge Science Park in Cambridge, England. Frontier develops the construction management simulators Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo, and has produced several games in David Braben's Elite series, including Elite Dangerous. The company takes its name from the earliest titles in the Elite series with which it was involved, a port of Frontier: Elite II and development of Frontier: First Encounters. In 2013, the company was listed on the AIM segment of the London Stock Exchange. It published third-party games under the Frontier Foundry label between 2019¹ and 2022¹. In December 2025, Jo Cooke became the company's current CEO. Cooke returned to Frontier as Chief Marketing Officer in August 2025, having previously worked at Frontier as Marketing and Publishing Director as the studio began self-publishing games, overseeing the launches of Elite Dangerous and Planet Coaster.

Frontier Developments plc is a British video game developer founded by David Braben in January 1994 and based at the Cambridge Science Park in Cambridge, England. Frontier develops the construction management simulators Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo, and has produced several games in David Braben's Elite series, including Elite Dangerous. The company takes its name from the earliest titles in the Elite series with which it was involved, a port of Frontier: Elite II and development of Frontier: First Encounters. In 2013, the company was listed on the AIM segment of the London Stock Exchange. It published third-party games under the Frontier Foundry label between 2019 and 2022. In December 2025, Jo Cooke became the company's current CEO. Cooke returned to Frontier as Chief Marketing Officer in August 2025, having previously worked at Frontier as Marketing and Publishing Director as the studio began self-publishing games, overseeing the launches of Elite Dangerous and Planet Coaster. ==Publishing== In June 2019, Frontier announced that it would begin publishing games from third-party developers under a new label named Frontier Publishing. At Gamescom 2020, Frontier announced that its publishing label would be renamed to "Frontier Foundry", and that it would publish Struggling from Chasing Rats in 2020, and Lemnis Gate from Ratloop Games in 2021. They would also publish an upcoming project from Haemimont Games. This game was revealed to be named Stranded: Alien Dawn which initially released as an Early Access title on Steam in October 2022, with a full release anticipated during 2023. On 13 June 2021, Frontier announced Lemnis Gate would be released on 3 August 2021 with an open beta being scheduled for July 2021. On 3 June 2021 during the Games Workshop Warhammer Skulls event, Frontier announced it would be publishing a reboot to the 1998 turn based game Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate named Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters. The reboot is to be developed by Canadian developer Complex Games and published under the Frontier Foundry label. It is set to release in 2022. Additionally Frontier announced a sequel to FAR: Lone Sails named FAR: Changing Tides, developed by Okomotive and published under the Frontier Foundry label. The game was released in March 2022. Deliver Us Mars, set ten years after the events of Deliver Us The Moon, was announced as part of the Future Games Show Spring Showcase on March 24, 2022. It features a new protagonist who reactivates her companion robot after an apparent ship crash on the planet of Mars. Deliver Us Mars is set to launch on both Epic Games Store and Steam PC storefronts, as well as Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, and PS4 consoles. The Great War: Western Front, a Real Time Strategy game developed by Petroglyph Games was announced as part of the Future Games Show during Gamescom on August 24, 2022. It launched on the Epic Games Store and Steam PC storefronts in March 2023. On 14 June 2023 it was announced that a review into the performance of Frontier Foundry concluded to cease all future third party publishing efforts due to disappointing financial performance, with most games releasing under the label failing to become profitable within one year of release. It was stated that games already released would continue to be supported but no further games would release under the label. Instead future funding that was to be allocated for this purpose would be diverted to producing games internally. Frontier released Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin on November 17, 2023. Realms of Ruin flopped with a drop in concurrent players and lackluster sales. Frontier shares plunged 20%. Attempts to widen their game portfolio didn't achieve the anticipated success in the past 5 years. Frontier stated it will refocus on creative management simulation (CMS) games. On 15 March 2024, Frontier announced that the publishing rights to RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 would be sold back to Atari, Inc. This was confirmed by its parent Atari SA on 2 April. ==Technology== ===Cobra engine=== Frontier began development of an in house game engine in 1988. Cobra uses C++ as the programming language. The development tools are created with C# / WPF / Forms and C++. Lua is used for gameplay features. It supports many platforms such as Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, iOS and Android devices. It supports cross-platform by allowing code and resources on PC to be compiled and run on other platforms. The game code and resources are isolated from the hardware by a common platform-neutral core API. It enables optimal use of a multi-processor, multi-threaded environment. There is a framework for rapid development of tools to view, tweak and review changes to resources on platforms in live sessions. The 4th generation of Cobra has cloud-based analytics for data-driven games. The proprietary tools, tech and pluggable modules enable the development a wide variety of games on tablets, smartphones, PC and consoles without making employees unable to contribute. ===Games developed===

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