This is just another sign that CCP is struggling to survive. I know over 20 people personally that were CCP employees around 2010, from every branch of the company. Today there are 6 left. While a few of them were hit by the downsizing of 2012, it's the subsequent stream of rats fleeing the sinking ship that's had me worried. People that have worked with CCP since Eve Online was launched, and were vital lynchpins for the internal structure of CCP have now left the company, most of them now partying hard over at Riot Games (League of Legends).
And whom do they hire to replace them? Mooks from Something Awful that generally last for about a year and veteran gamers that are clueless about their jobs. Case in point, the very accurate rumours about the layoffs yesterday were posted on Reddit two days before they happened. CCP Falcon, formerly known ingame as Verone from VETO Corp, had this to say about the rumours:
This is nothing more than a rumor with no basis of fact. Hope that's enough of a confirmation for you guys.
This is the overall level of competence that can be found within the company nowadays.
In the Council of Stellar Management's latest meeting, it was revealed that they're either incapable or unwilling to move Eve Online in the direction it needs to go. Eve Online, their biggest cash cow. They're clueless about how to solve the Nullsec problems (and the answers they
do have are being constantly blocked by Nullsec-friendly CCP staff, metagaming FTW), they don't know how the 10-year old legacy code that runs the game works anymore, and they don't have the manpower to code new content into the game. In short, they're dead in the water. The only thing they can do at the moment is juggle around some numbers (rebalancing ships and modules, nerfing industry, etc.) and hope it fools the subscribers into thinking that it's an expansion with "new" content. What little content is being added is a thinly-veiled attempt to milk more money out of the subscribers, like a limited form of custom ship skins and Limited Edition spaceships.
Oh, and Dust is actually turning a profit, so there's no chance of it being cancelled anytime soon. Valkyrie, the Oculus Rift exclusive dogfighting title, is more likely to be axed than Dust.