Electronic Arts Cuts 5% Of Workforce, Closes Studio And Cancels Games

EA always has felt like the absolute greediest gaming company. Not even Ubisoft.

The vast majority of my favorite games were made by significantly fewer people than each AAA game studios' announced number of layoffs.

If that doesn't sum up the current state of the industry I don't know what does.

Well, that fits the bill. The other companies In the same vein as EA have been laying off, so EA probably saw that and said “oooo, what a good idea!”

Gotta make more profit than last year after all. Profit is not enough. It’s gotta be a bigger profit than last year.

i cant speak too much on this but i wonder if this is a case of the next gen bubble finally popping, games and graphics getting bigger and more expensive each year and still failing to deliver. so sad to see after last year being considered a great year for gaming

nintendos last gen approach could very well be the thing keeping them stable

jesus can we get a break please there's no way they couldn't have planned around this when they had the chance

670 is only 5%? Holy fudge, EA is more overstaffed than Activision!

@boxyguy at this point with how inconsequential every generational jump is at this point im cool with nintendo being behind the curve if it means good games are made and employees arent being let go

Here we go again.
EA is Everything Abysmal now.

Most games journalism just quotes these press releases without comment or analysis.

We ain’t gonna have an amazing year of games like 2023 for a while

@Zeebor15 Does that mean they had 13400 staff?! 😂

@imadeanaccount Betcha it's like how lopsided Activision was, and it's all in whatever mobile nonsense they have. Cause it sure ain't in Codemasters. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Codemasters was most of this. Them or "Motive," the Iron Man guys. I do not know EA teams.

Oh for the love of-
At this rate why would anyone want to work for these companies?

That's some slick execuspeak to cover up that they overhired during the pandemic like everyone else. It'd be great if one of them would just own it and admit how stupid it is to frame a flash in the pan surge as sustainable growth.

Wasn’t the Sony announcement like 2 days ago? Jeez it feels like it never ends.

Maybe they should make better games that people want to buy. We're all at the mercy of the markets these days, and the shareholders like things that sell. It's not difficult.

Can we just get an article where a company lays off 0% of their workforce?

And yet PlayStation laid off more of their workforce. Sony… making EA look like less the villain they can be.

@HotGoomba Nintendo hasn’t laid anyone off. Can’t speak for NOA and NOE divisions though

@HotGoomba
Nintendo hasn't, to my knowledge, laid off anyone in years. Maybe a firing here or there for leaks or bad work, but no mass layoffs.

What a wonderful industry to work in.

@Spider-Kev @progx How is the Chibi-Robo Zip Lash company the most morally correct lmao

I think this will in the long run be a good decision for the gaming industry, so long as they are more reasonable in their "AAA" development ventures... hear me out!
I was thinking about this when Sony and Microsoft let go of a huge chunk of their workforce. The biggest reason why Sony is barely making any profit despite their games selling millions and their PlayStation Plus basically being free money is that their budgets have ballooned to a ridiculous degree. This is largely in part to having teams of several hundreds per studio working for on average 7 years for a single game. The investment for said game and maintenance to keep the studio personal paid and happy is too much, and that's not even considering how the top brass are being paid incredibly high, (it's a relatively minor factor but it illustrates the point that the money isn't being managed well).

The best scenario now would be for the truly passionate and ambitious workers who were let go to start their own smaller teams and try to make their own projects. Build a studio from the ground up that is lean, flexible, able to crunch if necessary and most importantly, have an owning interest in the projects success. Build studios where the talent gets a cut from their products net income. Chances are most workers are not willing to take such a risk but those that do will have a better hand at shaping the industry going forward.

@HotGoomba
Better title: Gaming company hired more employees by certain % and they got raised salary.

Interesting, the AAA companies are dying and the indies devs are thriving.

Sadly things are only going to get worse from here for the gaming industry development staffs and layoffs

Guess its "lay off your employees" day for some companies

A bad recession indeed

So they all got laid huh?

@imadeanaccount
Electronic Arts isn't even the first company this week to announce mass layoffs.

@HotGoomba Nintendo is a Japanese studio, they are not allowed to lay people off.

A good video about this is a recent one from Good Vibes Gaming:
https://youtu.be/88dj8ISV3to?si=w8dvGTIPlDlu2W2u

The loss of the Respawn Star Wars game hurts.

@Axecon
Absolutely, the factors that have lead to this aren’t getting better for this part of the industry in fact it will probably get much much worse if Sony and MS try to force out another console generation in the next couple years and we recently had Sony making an insane statement about the PS5 being in the later half of it’s lifecycle so it’s not looking good.

@boxyguy

While that makes sense at a glance, their are some important things to consider.

The overwhelming majority of tech layoff are happening at healthy companies experience high, and in some cases record high, profits and revenue. It's also not an industry wide tend, it's focused in the US, is happening less frequently in the EU and UK, and is basically not happening in Japan. In fact Japan has seen record wage growth in the video game industry over the last 3 years, and most development studios are aggressively hiring.

Capcom gave everyone a 30% raise in 2022, and if you look at what they are making, it's almost exclusively "next gen" focused. They also sunk a ton of money into a live service game that failed pretty hard. They are making the same "mistakes" as everyone else. Yet their last Major layoffs were in 2018 and only impacted a Canadian studio.

This has more to do with mentality then economic reality. Why does a company exist?

In the US, the answer is "for no reasons then to enriching the top few stakeholders at the expense of all others". If firing 670 people is going to make Vanguard Group (the largest shareholder) $1, then you fire 670 people. It is the morally correct thing to do, because the only moral obligation of a company is to make it's shareholders money.

In Japan, a COE's job is to look after the people who work for the company. If keeping 670 people employed is going to cost the shareholders a ton of money but not sink the company, then the shareholders are just going to have to be okay with less. The morally correct thing to do is keep them working. At times, both Nintendo and Sega have had executives take pay cuts or flat out make payments to the company to prevent lay offs. It's why, as a rule, Japanize companies keep a ton of cash on hand, so they can operate at a lose for years without having to get rid of anyone.

This is VERY reductionist, but it's not inaccurate.

@locky-mavo Sadly that is not the case. This is industry wide. A lot of indies are shuddering. You just don't hear about it because they aren't big enough to make a news article. This state of affairs has been building for a while. I used to work at Epic, before their layoffs and you could see the writing on the wall there. I joined an indie studio, and sister companies are dropping like flies. This is a multifaceted problem that simple distillations won't suffice. Not sure how long this will go for.

@Spider-Kev @friendly is correct. Japan's labor laws make it very difficult to lay people off. It is ranked the hardest nation in the world to get fired from. That doesn't mean that Nintendo isn't doing great. It just means you will hear fewer stories like this from Japan.

@HeadPirate it is inaccurate to claim that a business only exists in the US to enrich the top few shareholders at the expense of all others. Just because it's true for some businesses doesn't mean it's true for every business.

Maybe Japanese culture have a better mentality of hiring the right amount of people to get the job done? Maybe the Japanese people are working longer and harder? Maybe western countries are lazy and thus it takes more people do the same amount of work as Japanese people? Maybe Japanese culture focus more on long term success instead of short term.

No one is entitled to a job. Where did this mentality begin?

@westman98 Absolutely correct, but I was just out how hated they are, I mean they've won the worst company in America awards before.

@boxyguy I agree, I think some people would sum Nintendo's approach up as being lazy or cheap, but from a business and consumer perspective I think it's what has kept them afloat for so long now.

That moment when EA technically sacks fewer people than PlayStation.

@Coalescence Android Wilson PR Speak Mode, engage...

Last I got from them was Burnout Paradise.

@HotGoomba I didn’t say morally correct, did I? I think you added a word in there for your benefit. Just stated Nintendo Co hasn’t laid anyone off, but I couldn’t speak for their America and Europe branches.

I notice the bosses don’t talk about how sorry they are, just what a bright future they are setting up for the company by doing this. What a load of guff!

Not surprised at all coming from EA, one of the worst gaming companies in the world. This layoff problem is only gonna get worse before it gets better.

@Purgatorium Because that isn't journalism. Most people who write about games haven't the first clue about analysis or standard journalistic practices. Ages ago, I heard the term "fanboys with paycheques", and it has seemingly remained a fairly apt descriptor in most cases.

@prw_88

You're talking philosophy. I'm talking the obligations of business to their share holders. While it's impossible to define a strict legal definition of what it means to "always maximum shareholder value", it's still a very real requirement of any publicly traded company. If a shareholder thinks the company is motivated by interests that will not result in higher stock price, the shareholder can sue. They often do, and while the burden of proof is high, they often win. So the idea that a company exists for the sole purpose of making profit for shareholders is a central idea of US commerce.

I'm not really sure what entitlement to a job or worker habits has to do with anything, but that statement is not accurate.
Some people are absolutely entitled to a job as long as they don't break any of the terms of their employment, like the people living in neo-socialist countries or people who work for unions where the collective agreement forbids termination without cause, while some people can be fired at any time without reason.

Just depends on what system you bought into. Laissez-faire Capitatim isn't the only deal out there. It's not even the most common. If it's the one you happen to support, that's your propagative. But at least try and remember it's not like that everywhere, and the companies doing it differently are getting along just fine.

The objective truth at issue here, however, is that these layoffs are not happening because of any economic situation, but instead an economic mindset, which is why companies in similar situations are making very different decisions based on geographic leadership.

@EVIL-C You’re not wrong about the fanboys with paycheques, but it is journalism to report the facts of layoffs with company statements. It’s straight reporting. Analysis is something else, which you wouldn’t usually find within the report, which is meant to be impartial.

And TBF, games journalism is a lot better than it used to be. Plenty of sites will feature reports where they speak to fired workers, commentary on why they believe these layoffs are happening, and yes, analysis.

This is why Bloomberg has hired people from sites like Kotaku.

(I still like the goofy games articles, though. Give me more rankings of the best crabs in Nintendo games…)

@prw_88 @boxguy

@HeadPirate has it right. This is nothing to do with tech curves or the cost of game production. We're approaching financial year end and the annual shareholder reports and the simple fact is that the easiest way to make projections for next year's profit look better is by trimming some existing costs and, sadly, people are easier to get rid of than any other cost.
The law in the US states that a CEO's job is to maximise profit for shareholders. Supposedly this is to stop someone deliberately running a company into the ground and costing shareholders their investment but in reality it's used by the like of 'activist investors' (who could more accurately be described as 'whining entitled arseholes' ) to sue companies and force them into making layoffs to supposedly boost profit.
The key point is that investors demand better results than last year, regardless of how well a company may be doing. Only growth counts. Because growth means higher share prices and those shares can then be sold for more money.
The depressing thing is that this won't change until we find a better way to deal with people who've reached the end of their working life. The biggest investor groups are pension funds and they need the growth and the sale of shares to be able to pay out the ever-increasing pensions costs to their members.

There are several different ways this could be resolved but, knowing humans, the solution that gets put in place would probably look like a cross between Logan's Run and Soylent Green.

I feel like we're heading to the great video game crash of 2024.

So what game are we dumping en-masse in the desert this time?

@boxyguy I think that that's the case. Big triple AAA games cost so much money and time to make now. If just one doesn't succeed it can mean layoffs are required for any given studio.
The cost/time risk management is far far to risky in my view as it stands..

Gotta fudge those numbers for the end of the financial year! The line must go up and the shareholders must be kept happy with increasing profits!

Fun fact, some studios are already rehiring for a bunch of the jobs they “had to” cut. It’s an absolute farce and laws need to be set up to protect people against this.

I never knew that 'sunsetting' was a term until now. Just a fancy word for cancel.

That 5% of their workforce equates to approximately 670 people is just mind blowing. And they are people, a person, so I wish them well

@Lightsiyd
Every morning and night for me.

@Friendly That's actually really interesting, didn't know they couldn't.

@progx I know, I was just being silly.

@Zeebor15 all studios seeing d.i.e. games don't sell including immortals of avium.
Most games that are cancelled were for those reasons.
If the ubisoft star wars game also sells bad i see ubisoft selling to microsoft. And hitting half of it's staff with layoffs.

That ea star wars game that was cancelled was a high republic game.
One of star wars worst selling comics.

Maybe they cancel the remaining 95% of games and close? What do they make? Some sports game which is the same as the last one and a star wars game that asks for more money? The words "surprise mechanics" killed this company.

@Spider-Kev Awesome

@kfflscnt D.I.E? Also there's no wat the EU would allow Microsoft to buy Ubisoft. They were okay with one American company buying another, but Ubisoft is one of the two biggest gaming employers in Europe. The other one is Embracer. I prefer Embracer, but there's no way the EU let's an all consuming American company buy out one of their biggest and most stable companies.

The fiscal year structure of reporting “success” is the root cause of this story we keep reading about (okay no obviously GREED is)
Projects in this era of video games especially take years of development. Profits will fluctuate on an annual basis unless studios are smarter about planning for releases.

I fear very much for the Switch 2 and it’s increased graphical fidelity. I believe there is a direct link to this human cost

Perhaps, those unemployed devs can make some interesting indies that significantly outsells EA trash?

Do…do corporations actually realise that it’s them who are accelerating the industry’s transformation. It’s not a bloody reaction to it. Western capitalism is bust. Absolutely no ethics ingrained into our culture.

If there’s one positive to take from all this, it’s that maybe gamers of all people will see capitalism for what it is. Unsustainable growth masquerading as a functioning system so that fat dobbers can suck the life out of human beings to get rich with zero effort.

@nessisonett What economic system would you prefer? Since this is the internet, I feel I must say that I’m asking sincerely. I’m not going to turn the question into apologetics for capitalism. I’ve often seen statements on here about capitalism being unsustainable, but I don’t recall seeing what people would like instead.

Again, whatever your response, I’d really like to know.

"Who needs a QA department anyways? We can just ***** out half-finished games and people will buy them. And best of all, we can sell the remaining content as DLC! Isn't capitalism great?!"

I'm grieving the loss of that Star Wars game. I was really looking forward to seeing what Respawn was going to do with that.

If it was not for Nintendo gaming would be completely stale, with other companies focusing only on bankable IP.

@Rhum17 Impossible to say. Any sort of utopian society is dead before it could get off the ground because of the world being built on capitalist structures and the US is very very willing to install somebody preferable if a country attempts to exist outside of world markets. Unless the entire world (or at least a major chunk) pivots at the same time towards actual genuine socialism and not just socialist policies within a capitalist society, it could never get off the ground. There’s a distinct possibility that a few years down the line, when the Earth’s truly been f***ed beyond reckoning, the rich will bugger off to space and the ones left behind will have a more equitable existence before extinction however. I think that’s the only reasonable way that we could get back to all living within our means in a collective society, if the rich all leave the planet or, on a less savoury note, are strung up in some sort of revolution. It’s not a simple question of what would I prefer to capitalism because we live in a world where that isn’t allowed, all I can really do is shake my fist at the fact my entire existence is meaningless and I’m destined to either be a cog in the machine or be crushed by it.

@nessisonett Thank you for the thoughtful response, I appreciate it.

i feel bad for the employees but ea themselves they can just disappear.

@imadeanaccount I really felt that way too but Activision dethroned them at some point.

The problem with EA, Ubisoft, and even Sony Entertainment, is that they became too big too soon. Their games don't sale as expected with that uncontrolled growth, hencer why they're laying off people now.

The industry as a whole is heading towards a crash. Under the current structure everything is required to constantly move upward and to the right which is not sustainable. So they gobble up and grow while their overall quality goes down as they cut corners. So we are expected to pay $70 for a game that requires a 50 GB download day one just to be playable, and odds are it will still be a buggy mess and will require an additional $30 DLC pass to be complete.

At the same time, the market is being flooded with low quality crap. The low end of the market is almost unsearchable because of the problem, and the mid-range market is being squeezed out of existence. Finally, it seems like everyone wants to have a permanent drip-feed from my wallet that they can increase at anytime without notice for their game-as-a-service.

And this is just one market segment. This same non-sense is happening in every entertainment industry and even fast food seems to be getting in on the fun (Thanks Wendy's). Eventually consumers are going to have enough and find something else to spend their cash on.

@Zeebor15 the uk eu ok the microsoft activision deal.
the politicians 100% got money out of it thats why it took a few times and the uk said yes.
ubisoft will probably be sold for 9 billion.
especially because ubisoft fits perfect in the gamepass image.
ubisoft does not want you to own your games just like microsoft and xbox.

Well if they had just released The Sims on switch (and I mean a full game on a cartridge not a digital thing with 101 DLC options), then maybe they’d have some good revenue. Someday someone is bound to realize what I’ve been saying is true… if the future of gaming is digital, then gaming has no future.

@kfflscnt While their goals are aligned, my therapist still says the lie I originally said is better for my mental health, or whatever is left

@HeadPirate While what you say has truth, it can also be taken into extremes. VZ, FLIC, XRX and many others have all tanked since COVID. I have yet to see lawsuits from investors. Disney is the perfect example and, as of now, I do not see any lawsuits from investors. The only one I see is lying about their streaming losses. I'm not saying it doesn't happen but I doubt it happens as much as claimed. If the burden of proof didn't always matter then there would be lawsuits every year with every company.

Assumptions are being made about the layoffs at EA. Maybe they abandoned some projects? Maybe they want to go in a different direction? Maybe they are overstaffed? Maybe EA is just dumb? Maybe these workers are bad workers? Maybe these people are close to retirement, which would be awful. I do not know why they are doing this but there could be an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone for EA. Remember, it costs time and money to train new employees.

Prices Law, 30% of the workforce does 50% of the work. There is nothing wrong with unions but if the union is preventing firings of people who need to be fired, then the unions are no better than the corporate ceo's. People that refuse to give it their all at work do not deserve their job. Period! And, sadly, that is the vast majority of the workforce in the western world. I have worked for AIG, and is now self employed, and has friends that are managers, and my brother worked for AECOM the world's largest civil engineering firm. The work ethic of people nowadays is garbage minus Asians and illegal Hispanics.

Who said anything about laisse-faire? Who says I am defending corporations? I suppose if you are going to strawman and ad homein EA for laying off 5% of their workforce, without truly knowing why, then you will do that to me and everyone else who disagrees with you.

The irony, don’t they just rehash the same game every year? Perhaps the business model of sequels make profits has finally peaked. Thanks marvel universe

Edit: what I said is unfair because I thought EA and just thought madden and fifa etc. I can see they do a lot more than that, my bad

@kfflscnt Sure, blame minorities instead of, oh I don't know, mediocre games with inflated budgets. Have fun in bigoted conspiracy land.

@Zeebor15 I hate getting political on here, but as nearly everything is politicized now, basically that bigot is blaming minorities for ALLLLLL the current problems related with industry layoffs (similarly with the recent Boeing fiasco, and subsequent conspiracy), and overlooks the facts like games with bloated budgets, uninteresting stories or characters, bland gameplay, etc.. are all the classic and most logical reasons of why a game might flop. Gaming has always been creatively diverse, but now budgets are so bloated, one flop can ruin an entire studio. Costs need to come down, not reduce diverse ideas and individuals.

@EVIL-C ...I'm, completely lost now. What were we talking about again?

@EVIL-C i live in the netherlands and am from nigeria (katsina) i am a minority.
how am i against them.

i had to leave my country because youre current president forced the un soldiers in my town.

but have a nice day even for a crazy guy like you.