Close to 670 employees will be affected, as EA move to concentrate on their owned IP and online communities
In Shakespeare’s Anthony And Cleopatra, said famous woman says “Give to a gracious message an host of tongues, but let ill tidings tell themselves when they be felt.” I.e., when you have good news you can go round the houses, but if you have bad news - like sending anall-hands email to the staff at EAto let them know that, less than a year afterthe last roundoflayoffs, a further 5% of them are getting booted - then you should just come out and say it as quickly and simply as possible.
This is, apparently, not a sentiment ever internalised by Andrew Wilson, EA’s CEO. Yesterday, when heannounced to everyone at EAthat a bunch of them were losing their jobs (again), he first spent three paragraphs talking about how EA is doing great, leading the industry, getting increasing engagement from fans, optimising their global footprint and sunsetting games oh yep, there it is, that’s the “you’re about to be unemployed” language right there. The company is moving away from “the development of future licensed IP” and toward “our owned IP, sports, and massive online communities”. Therefore: 670 ish devs (byEurogamer’s count) must go.
Inanother message, EA’s president of EA entertainment and technology Laura Miele revealed that, related to this, they’ve cancelled the Star Wars FPS game Respawn were working on, though it sounds like a new Jedi game is in the works. They’ve also entirely shut down the Battlefield standalone single-player studio Ridgeline, after game director Marcus Lehto left (under his own steam).
If you want to feel your intelligence be mildly insulted by reading 500 words of business-speak-that-seems-quite-disingenuous-when-you-get-right-down-to-it, Wilson’s message has been sharedon EA’s official website. The bit where he says people will be let go doesn’t actually evensaythat. The quote is: “In this time of change, we expect these decisions to impact approximately 5 percent of our workforce. I understand this will create uncertainty and be challenging for many who have worked with such dedication and passion and have made important contributions to our company.”
I really hate the “our business is doing better than ever, which is why we’re getting rid of nearly 700 people” style of messaging, but I guess if executives said “listen, we didn’t grow sustainably during the pandemic and just massively overhired, so we’re having to scale back so our books still show financial growth”, then they might have to suffer some consequences themselves.
I’m sorry, I just get a bit more angry every time I have to write one of these up. There have already been loads of layoffs this year already. Just this week there was bad news forstudios at Sony, andfrom Supermassive Games. Check thelayoffs tagto enter the sad zone.
