The bloodbath continues: EA lays off 350 people

Source: EA's official website.

Seems to be a brutal time in the industry right now. Sales and profits are at record highs, yet here we are; Telltale Games closing, Activision Blizzard slashing 700+ jobs, ArenaNet following suit with their own layoffs. Who's next?

350 doesn't seem that bad, actually, given how massive EA is.

Not sure if this is EA only, or EA plus developers. IMO "AAA" (heavy emphasis on quotes) developers and publishers already have too many people and overblown budgets.

Still sucks, though. I'm sure there are some people that did not deserve to get cut, and others that deserve it and did not (specifically, their officers...but how you going to get those multi-million dollar bonuses and not cut staff?)

Is that their side of the Destiny team?

@mrbojangles25:

Well, according to Jason Schreier, the layoffs mostly affect publishing and marketing, and closing offices in Russia and Japan.

But yeah, still sucks for them. Losing your job is never cool, no matter who you work for.

Edit: 350 jobs is around 4% of EA's entire employee count. Small, but not insignificant.

Destiny? EA has nothing to do with Destiny.

Oops. I'm confusing my big corporate entities.

So interchangeable they are.

Oh thank God, glad to hear it was publishing and marketing.

My place of work recently laid off about 15% of its staff. Sucks, lots of good people, but they were mostly marketing folks and I honestly could not be happier, objectively speaking (that is to say, I am happy it was not "people that count" that got let go). Those folks basically just sit around, brainstorm some really stupid ideas (and, occasionally, a good one) about how to get people to notice our products, and take three hour "work lunches". They also got a lot of wasted resources diverted their way because our company went through a "we can be fun like Google" phase where they were bought TV's, standing desks, expensive office chairs, and so forth.

Sad to see the people go, happy to see the position gone.

Some production folks were let go as well, which we miss, but not very many.

Anyway, as far as EA goes, sounds like they did the right thing.

I suppose. That said, that such cost-cutting is even being contemplated seems to bode some kind of turbulence in the industry.

Oh dear. This isn't Bioware-related, is it?

Yeah we need more Sims expansion packs

Honestly can't say I've played a memorable EA game all generation.

The Struggle is real!

You're probably thinking of Anthem, the Destiny wannabe.

That depends what Bioware studio you mean; Bioware Shanghai, or Bioware Canada, or Bioware Bangkok, or Bioware Texas, or Bioware Ukraine, or Bioware---

Kidding, but that's certainly how it seems these days with these big companies.

Anthiny.

Battlefield 1 sure was memorable for me.

It shined a light on one of the most gruesome parts of human history. Though it may not have been a realistic representation of WW1 at all, I have spent countless hours since playing Battlefield 1 reading up and watching stuff about the great war.

Operations mode is a series classic imho.

Terrible company that makes terrible games treats employees terribly. Is normal.

Unfortunate, good luck to those affected ....maybe Ubisoft can hire them, getting great praise for Divison 2

That sucks, but at least it's not Activision numbers.

I don't know about you, but I personally enjoy Mass Effect: Andromeda and to me, that was more memorable then any EA game I enjoy so far.

350 is a good sized studio. Hell there was a time that was 2 or 3 good sized studios.

They hired too many people to market and publish Star Wars games....then ended up only putting out 2.

Meanwhile the higher ups, the real scum, will be sitting in their ivory tower smoking cigars, snorting coke off a prostitutes ass and planning their next mobile game.

Monsters.

I'd be interested to see why. It could be a new direction for the company, thus those positions became redundant (lol,) but we all know they're heavily MT focused.

All-in-all, it really sucks for those individuals. I went through employment problems with a previous employer (which I won,) but it did not make up for the loss of employment.

I've been looking at my gaming magazines that I own. They are from 2001-2006 6th and 7th gen era. So many companies have come and gone. Best to all that lost their jobs as I lost mine in June.

Hmm, I wonder why? EA is getting profits. Maybe they are going to hire more devs, that would make sense since they like grinding their games one by one. Or they fired them because most of their marketing teams suck at their jobs.

nothing lasts forever, its cause they overbuilt their back end. People change game and move on.

Blizzard would have you believe OW still has 40+ million players, Just isnt true.

Sucks for the people that lost their jobs but I don't really care about EA.

EA hasn't made memorable games all generation. Battlefield was a flop, the Sims gets worse and worse, Fifa/Madden is the same old same old, and Anthem was a dud. Their best game this generation is Apex, which is literally a fucking Fortnite rip off; Fortnite is a rip off of PUBG, so Apex is a rip off of a rip off.

This is literally the problem with gamers. "This is very shitty of X, but at least they weren't as shitty as Y." Nah, call BOTH of them out.

Same reason Activision fired 800 people despite record profits, these are greedy mega corporations driven by profits for the people at the top. Less people working for them means less people they have to pay, which looks good for investors (record breaking profits from not having to pay workers as much) and it's great for their CEO who gets a huge bonus.

@madrocketeer: 700 and 350 jobs are not a “bloodbath”. GMs layoffs of 14k people is a bloodbath. Developers will find work effortlessly. I’m a developer and I don’t think I’ve ever been out of work more than a month. What does a factory worker do after being laid off?

This company has never had a marquee franchise IMo si so it's obvious why they have issues.

Mr. Bojangles is still angry about the time that he was the lead marketer at his father's sneaker factory but accidentally left an expensive prototype shoe on the conveyor-belt. Its destruction would end the business! This childhood tragedy became inspiration for the Robin Williams' classic ...Mrs. Doubtfire!

Why are some here using the term "fired" while the employees are actually "laid off"? Their jobs are not terminated due to violations of their contract, but that they just loss their jobs due to cost-cutting reasons.

Heard that an entire studio was shuttered...which was it?

@davillain-: Though far from perfect, Mass Effect Andromeda and Dragon Age Inquisition were memorable games. I also love NHL. Many gamers also continue to support fifa.

They chose to do contract work as a career.

Stop feeling bad for them. The great ones will find more work, the bad ones will have to get better or find a new career.

That’s very unfortunate. Hopefully they all find work again quickly.

Ugh man don't bring up the pain... I hated that game so much I couldn't even finish it. It had nothing to do with facial animations and everything to do with how little they cared about the things that made Mass Effect so wonderful to begin with. It started right with gameplay too....

Every bit of what made you connect with the characters was sucked out the window in the decision to make them irrelivent in combat. Choosing a tech specialist, and a biotic to accompany you meant something and formed a character dependency that andromeda severely lacked. The fact is that you were alone In andromeda and those who accompanied you provided you with no dependency and no benefit in combat... They took up space.

The open world was also the single most bland, pain by numbers experience this generation... Random combat scenarios popping up in random places in the desert or the ice world... Oh look alien technology.... No character, no real CARE for the player and the meaning behind their interactions...

I played close to 30 hours of it. I ignored the animationgate controversy because I don't care how good the graphics are. If it had a killer story and great characters, facial animations mean nothing.... What I found is that EA Bioware made an extremely underdeveloped game in a franchise people HELLA care about. A game that striped away every semblance of what made the franchise resonate, from gameplay to story and they tried passing it off as something it most certainly wasn't... A Mass Effect game.

@Baconstrip78: Spam out CV's like no tomorrow to all the employment agencies, websites, local businesses etc, like how anyone would apply for jobs. (I worked in warehouse / factories).

EA memorable game = TITIANFALL 2. single player was great and multiplayer was fun too. I brought need for speed rivals (£4. Last need for speed was the WiiU game) so quite enjoyable, not exactly different from any other N4S. Apex legends is fun even though I'm rubbish at it.