This article was originally published on May 22, 2026 - read the full issue

By Patrick Garratt

While the main news from this years Fanfest saw the transformation of CCP into Fenris Creations, professional life for VP of publishing Eyrún Jónsdóttir and COO Adrian Blunt continues unaltered. They spoke to Knowledge in Iceland about how the studio is scaling operations to accomodate Vanguard and Frontier alongside Eve, and why Fanfest is still the most important date in the company's calendar. 

Despite the corporate news surrounding Fenris's identity, Eve players attending Fanfest were understandably more focused on revelations related to the company's forthcoming release slate: the launch of Eve expansion Cradle Of War on June 9; extraction shooter Eve Vanguard's alpha from July 7–20; and survival sandbox Eve Frontier's new cycle, its sixth, on June 25. 

Running three live-service games simultaneously is an operational challenge Fenris Creations tackles via the singularity of New Eden, the setting for all its games. 

"We generally share infrastructure," says Blunt. "Even when it was just Eve, that's one universe, with so many different touch points just within Eve Online. From a support structure, we've always had to support different teams within that. Moving out to multiple games is really just an extension of that." 

Despite the manner in which Fenris has traditionally dealt with multiple projects, the approach has evolved as Vanguard and Frontier have matured into larger entities with their own communities and release cadences. 

"As the titles were growing more into becoming their own thing, we now have more dedicated people for those specific titles," Jónsdóttir adds. "We have a mini team in London doing Vanguard stuff, and we're establishing a more specific team for Frontier on the publishing side as well. There are limits to how many people can work across different titles. As they grow, they need more dedicated resources." 

For Blunt, the operational discipline that makes this manageable came from the same place as the games themselves. The stability offered by Eve Online, which achieved record numbers towards the end of last year, has allowed for measured strategising: "We've had the luxury of time to get used to doing this and to scale up in a very methodical way,' he says.

Commercial logic 

The commercial logic of the shared-universe model becomes clearest at FanFest. The annual gathering in Reykjavik is primarily a player event, but it's also a publishing vehicle for the growing Fenris portfolio. 

"Even though the fundamental is Eve players coming to hear updates, meet other players and meet the devs," Jónsdóttir says, "we're able to use the opportunity and bring showcases for Vanguard and Frontier into the festival. Every year, we're starting to see more and more players specific to those games showing up." 

Blunt, whose career spans Splash Damage, Square Enix, EA and Ubisoft, is unambiguous about FanFest's significance. 

"I've never experienced anything like this," he says. "We have a relationship with our playerbase and our community that is, I would argue, unrivalled in the industry." 

The studio takes a player-centric approach that runs through every function. Blunt notes, for example, that FanFest is "the highlight of [the] finance team's year, because they finally get to meet the players." He recounts an anecdote of meeting a player at Fanfest who created an Eve account after attending the event: "That's his driving force for playing in the game. It's an engagement tool for us all to be able to talk about this incredible universe that we've created, that the players have created." 

A multi-platform universe 

But Fanfest is no longer only an Eve Online event. One of the firmer indications about where the portfolio is heading came not from the event's main stage but from the exhibition floor, where Eve Frontier was being demoed with game controllers. For a studio whose flagship title has spent 23 years accumulating one of the most complex keyboard-and-mouse interfaces in PC gaming, the implications are significant.

"It's so much easier to start with controller support in mind than having to do it later down the line," Jónsdóttir says. 

The executives remain coy on the subject of console versions, but the ambition is obvious. Blunt explicitly references controller support for Vanguard. 

"Whilst right now everything is on PC, I think it is very important that we support controller, because that just keeps doors open," he says. "Again, surfacing the games wherever we can. It would be foolish to ignore console, but certainly to ignore gamepad support, particularly for a shooter. 

"We're investing heavily in that and we'll continue to do so." 

When exactly these titles might arrive on formats other than PC is, Jónsdóttir acknowledges, "another question." 

But while experimentation with new products and formats is ongoing, so is the stability of Eve Online. The announcement of Cradle Of War, the first instalment of a three-expansion arc called Theatres Of War, signals a maturation of the company as much as the product itself. Blunt's read is practical and matches similar comments from CEO Hilmar Pétursson: the roadmap represents what is now possible, not a change in direction. 

"I come from a development and production background," he says. "I always want to see as far into the future as I possibly can. But I'm also very cognisant that the next six months are probably pretty clear – beyond that, it's a bit vague. There's always going to be change within that theme, and we have to be prepared for that." 

The studios across Reykjavik, London and Shanghai are all surfacing individual efforts towards a singular goal. "That's one of the beauties of Fenris: we're all working in this universe," Blunt says. "It's all working in that singular vision." 

For Jónsdóttir, the purpose of a public multi-expansion commitment is more direct. 

"It's first and foremost for our playerbase to have insight into the future," she says. "It gives players something to look forward to. And in the meantime, they have a lot of things to do in the current expansion. That keeps them happy and playing."

This article was originally published on May 22, 2026 - read the full issue