This doesn't surprise me. 

They had some really excellent and smart people working there.  Then they had some really poor people and not so hard working people working there.  This is not uncommon when an engineering mind starts a tech company.  They are REALLY, and I mean REALLY good at the hardware portion of it but when it comes sales/support, continuing operations it falls apart when you bring in "experts" to run the show.   Meaning that the "new comers" either don't understand or care to acknowledge the problems.

I purchased a 3dr x8 when you could get it in the almost ready to fly state .  There were numerous problems that I had to troubleshoot.  The first and foremost problem was with the silicone wiring from the power distribution board which was not mounted in the body (not real smart).  From the ESC's they just loosely brought the power through the legs to the motors.  NOTHING on the aluminum frame is deburred, that was a good for a burned out ESC after the PDB vibrated enough to wear through the wire.  The ESC's they spec'd with the almost ready to fly kit were NOT good for under 30 F.  Even after a calibration they simply fail to work at low temps.  Quick google search confirmed that you have to replace the ESC's with a better brand. The battery charger they supplied wouldn't balance the LIPO.  And finally, I had one battery that failed after 6 charges (likely due to the faulty battery charger).  That was good for yet again another drop out of the sky crash unexpectedly.  So I've basically taken it all down to the frame, rewired it, put new ESC's on, remounted the GPS mast, purchased a new set of batteries and a new charger.  Really, the only thing I have that's still original is the frame, motors and the ardupilot.  Btw, there was very little instructions that came with the machine.

All the above items with the exception of the fit and finish are understandable with new products.  I really do have a tolerance for "new" things not working quite right.  What is not acceptable is the response from 3dr to any of the problems.  Basically no support and as you read the article, they are cutting it back even further.

Now you compare that to something like DJI where the fit and finish is far superior.  BIL flys them and quite frankly he gets quite a bit more flight time for the $ than I do (I'm always fixing mine).  Truth be told, I would have been way better off just starting from scratch and spec'ing out my own components.  I would have been time and money ahead if I still wanted to tinker.

I wish they could have stuck around because now I won't get support for the products I own but if you look at any of the hobby outlets you can buy most of the parts aftermarket anyways... so I'm not real disappointed.  I do feel bad for the founders but that's how the chips fall I guess.

The pixhawk is a great controller but it's been knocked off so much now by the Chinese it's hard to compete with that.  Last I heard it was 1/2 the money as the OEM version.  3DR tried to lock out the knock offs from uploading their firmware.  That's one of the big problems with being open source.