EA laying off 2000 employees?

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eloj

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In recent weeks, EA has aligned all elements of its organizational structure behind priorities in new technologies and mobile. This has led to some difficult decisions to reduce the workforce in some locations. We are extremely grateful for the contributions made by each of our employees – those that are leaving EA will be missed by their colleagues and friends.

These are hard but essential changes as we focus on delivering great games and showing players around the world why to spend their time with us.
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-- http://www.ea.com/news/ea-organizational-update

The 2000 number comes from Jesse Cox' twitter, so treat as rumor.
 
I place you in charge of EArrakis.
It's yours to squeeze as I promised.
I want you to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze!
Give me spice!
Drive them! Drive them into utter submission!
 
It's unfortunate that people are losing their jobs, but not surprising given EA's financial and customer service problems. Management needs to change, otherwise I think we'll see more and more of this.
 
Kotaku is reporting it may be the Partners Program, EA Montreal, and another mobile studio. Not confirmed, but seems plausible given the shift in EA's priorities.
 
I don't see how the EA Partners program being closed could amount to too many layoffs. Sure there were people dedicated to handling that, but they can't have been that many. 2000 sounds like whole studios going away. Taking their statement at face value, this means studios who are not working on NG launch titles or mobile games. EA Montreal would be one such for sure.

Personally I think "aligning with mobile" is a huge mistake, but what do I know.
 
Sounds like EA...blame poor sales/performance on gamers/piracy/whatever else, fire a bunch of employees instead of revising horrible business practices.
 
EA corporate policy forces developers to release shitty games. Then when the shitty games don't sell well the developers get laid off.
 
bigdogchris said:
EA corporate policy forces developers to release shitty games. Then when the shitty games don't sell well the developers get laid off.
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In the long run, it might be better off for those developers to work without EA looking over their shoulder telling them what the game should be like instead of making a great game.
 
Skillz said:
In the long run, it might be better off for those developers to work without EA looking over their shoulder telling them what the game should be like instead of making a great game.
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Game development costs lots of money and it seems that the larger the publisher you choose the more the costs skyrocket. Everyone wants BF3 graphics but that costs so much money to do. Then the publisher tacks on it's tax and suddenly your game has to sell 7 million copies to break even. To me there are just too many people working at large publishers for the business model to be viable. Too many people with their hand open waiting for the money you may make off a title. By the same token nobody wants every game to be an Indie game.
 
cageymaru said:
Game development costs lots of money and it seems that the larger the publisher you choose the more the costs skyrocket. Everyone wants BF3 graphics but that costs so much money to do. Then the publisher tacks on it's tax and suddenly your game has to sell 7 million copies to break even. To me there are just too many people working at large publishers for the business model to be viable. Too many people with their hand open waiting for the money you may make off a title. By the same token nobody wants every game to be an Indie game.
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In today's day and age, you really don't need a big publisher to get your game to gamers.
 
Skillz said:
In today's day and age, you really don't need a big publisher to get your game to gamers.
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You do if you want to make AAA-level games. Unless your name is Crytek or Valve, independent studios don't have the money to make $30-40-50 million games. As much as big publishers can suck, they are needed if you want graphical advancements to keep happening. For smaller titles around or under a few million big publishers can be avoided but even then it's a big risk.
 
Derangel said:
You do if you want to make AAA-level games. Unless your name is Crytek or Valve, independent studios don't have the money to make $30-40-50 million games. As much as big publishers can suck, they are needed if you want graphical advancements to keep happening. For smaller titles around or under a few million big publishers can be avoided but even then it's a big risk.
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AAA games are becoming a dirty word. Only a hand full of them meet the expectations of major publishers (as proven by SquareEnix's insane expectations) so really many games even if they make their nut are still considered failures by those standards.

I think sooner rather than later we are going to see the death of a $100+ million dollar games minus a few continually recycled franchises (COD , BF). Very few of them really make back what they cost after development and marketing are calculated at the end.
 
I think Hard Reset had AAA-quality graphics...good gameplay as well, if simplistic. That didn't need a huge publisher.
 
Look at Star Citizen and what Chris Roberts is saying, his aim is AAA game without the AAA price tag.

I believe this is the right presentation http://youtu.be/ZZWaBnpSvUk but he does go on to discuss all of the overheads that a traditional developer would have interms of how much money they receive after the resellers fees, marketing, publishers, etc, fees are taken out and how they need to sell 5 million to even break even.
 
Maybe EA is shifting it's focus towards mobile gaming? You don't need many dev to make those games.
 
Godmachine said:
AAA games are becoming a dirty word. Only a hand full of them meet the expectations of major publishers (as proven by SquareEnix's insane expectations) so really many games even if they make their nut are still considered failures by those standards.

I think sooner rather than later we are going to see the death of a $100+ million dollar games minus a few continually recycled franchises (COD , BF). Very few of them really make back what they cost after development and marketing are calculated at the end.
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Publishers need to set expectations accordingly. SquareEnix expecting what it did out of Tomb Raider was stupid. It was a good game, but no way in hell was it going to sell like a major AAA franchise. The problem really isn't the development costs so much as marketing costs. Publishers spend so much money on marketing some of these games that it makes it impossible for them to get a profit. Capcom is a good example of this too, specifically DmC. It was a good game, but most people could see that it wasn't going to sell to the standards of DMC3 or whatever Capcom was expecting. Instead of realizing this and trying to figure out how to adjust their expectations correctly Capcom blamed Ninja Theory for the game not selling what they wanted. Well, to be more precise Capcom blamed all external development for their games no doing well, talking about "quality issues", not a month after they admitted that the internally developed RE6 was a failure.

MavericK96 said:
I think Hard Reset had AAA-quality graphics...good gameplay as well, if simplistic. That didn't need a huge publisher.
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AAA has more to do with a budget level than anything else. COD is technically a AAA series, but it looks like ass. Sadly we do need that level of games still as it is expensive to create some of the big titles we see. I do think a lot of games have insanely inflated development costs due to team size and outsourcing (Ubisoft's big titles, specifically) but even a team of 100 people working for a few years on a game very quickly pushes costs up.

What we consider "AAA" PC titles do seem to have a lot lower development costs. I wonder how the development cost breaks down for exclusive console titles vs multiplatform titles.
 
It might be because of the new CEO whatever guy wanting to show he was reducing costs or something so he got rid of a bunch of employees. Happens lots when a "new guy" comes in to show he is doing things differently.
 
Sucks for the people getting laid off, but I can't help but smile when I hear EA is going down the tubes. The day they go under completely will be a grand day indeed.
 
Derangel said:
I wonder how the development cost breaks down for exclusive console titles vs multiplatform titles.
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A few years ago I read an article about exclusive games versus multiplatform games. They stated that the cost was around $9m for just a single platform vs $17m to ship it to the 360, ps3, and wii. This was a while back though and I think game production costs have risen significantly since.
 
All they need is a marketing dept and an executive suite.
All that other stuff is just fluff, and a waste of money.

bassackards thats EA
 
Glyphic said:
Except all those franchises they killed will still be dead :(
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Eventually EA will be gone though. Seems like there's a shift in thinking going on in the gaming industry. You see more kickstarting, indie devs, and a shift away from intrusive DRM and anti-consumer practices every day. Take the Witcher 3 dev. They think DRM is the worst thing in the industry.

Tomaszkiewicz also reaffirmed the studio’s anti-DRM policy. “DRM is the worst thing in the gaming industry,” he said. “It’s limiting our rights to play games owned by us. Let’s imagine that you have a game that requires internet connection to prove that you actually bought it. What if you lose your connection because of your internet provider? You can’t play anymore.

“I believe that as long as people feel that companies are cheating them by selling games they cannot play freely, limiting their rights, and making unfair DRM, then they will fight against that.”
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http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/04/26/the-witcher-3-will-abandon-qtes-drm-still-off-the-cards/

EA really helped the gaming industry with their horrible Simcity debacle. Talk about a kick in the nuts for always on DRM.

I don't don't think we'll ever completely be rid of companies like EA, but I think critical mass has been hit, and that we should see some positive changes to gaming industry in the future. Devs are starting to see the light and that if you piss consumers off enough, you will eventually pay for it.
 
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Cod said:
Kotaku is reporting it may be the Partners Program, EA Montreal, and another mobile studio. Not confirmed, but seems plausible given the shift in EA's priorities.
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yup, they already broke their partnership with crytek.
 
Did you guys think they suddenly won't need a huge amount of employees for all the console ports they won't have to code anymore?

Next gen consoles + Pc are so much alike, the specialized teams once needed are now obsolete. Surely that must account for a couple hundred, right?
 
Here's the memo that went out to those that still have jobs (source: Gamasutra):

As we begin the new fiscal year, I want to provide you with a brief update on some important changes to our organization. As Executive Chairman, my focus is to ensure EA is delivering high quality games and services to our consumers, while helping the executive team develop a FY14 operating plan that drives growth, rationalizes headcount and controls costs.

In recent weeks, the executive team has been tasked with evaluating every area of our business to establish a clear set of priorities, and a more efficient organizational structure. This process has led to some difficult decisions about the number of people and locations needed to achieve our goals.

The workforce reductions which we communicated in the last two weeks represent the majority of our planned personnel actions. We are extremely grateful for the contributions made by each of these individuals – they will be missed by their colleagues and friends at EA.

We are also taking action to streamline our organization, including changes in two key areas:

· Core marketing functions have been consolidated under our COO, Peter Moore. The combined group will bring together our Label marketing teams, Global Acquisition Marketing and Marketing Analytics into one multi-talented team under Todd Sitrin’s leadership. The development and marketing teams will continue to work as cohesive units, driving clear and consistent messaging and consumer engagement for each of our franchises.

· Origin will move into Frank Gibeau’s Labels organization. Andrew Wilson will take on the leadership of Origin, working with CJ Prober and the team to create more value and an enhanced entertainment experience for our consumers.

Change is sometimes difficult, but essential. The adjustments we are making will put us in the best position to build great games and services, deliver them more efficiently to consumers, and demonstrate to players around the world why they should spend their time with us.

EA is a great company, with talented and hard-working teams, a strong portfolio of products and an extremely bright future.

Thank you all for your dedication and commitment to our long term success!
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I have nothing against marketing, but I kind of hope most of these people are in marketing. Too much game budget is put on marketing schemes rather than the game selling itself with it's quality. "Pre-order before Jun 24 and get the bonus gun of awesome" <- marketing scheme
 
Who needs them? Most of the games I'm looking forward to most are being funded by Kickstarter. Who wants yet another dumbed down over budget shooter that is exactly the same game as its predecessor, just with a bigger number in the title?

The only thing EA brings is always on DRM, and half finished games with overpriced DLC.
 
They bought out the entire market basically got so big then just BUST. Good job EA you clueless jerks you bought our Orgin Mythic Bioware anything you could get your hands on then just laid it to waste.
 
It's commons that pay for the mistakes of the people in charge...
 
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