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Electronic Arts are laying off roughly 670 employees, or 5% of its workforce and has reportedly cancelled a number of upcoming projects including Respawns Star Wars first person shooter.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson blames the job cuts on ”accelerating industry transformation where player needs and motivations and changed significantly”
He also confirmed that going forward EA will be moving away from licensed IP and concentrating on owned IP, sports titles and games with ”massive online communities”.
EA becomes the third company to lay off a large number of staff this week alone after Until Dawn developers Supermasive Games announced plans to let 90 of its staff go and Sony who are cutting 8% of its staff.
For those keeping score the total layoffs in the first 59 days of 2024 currently stand at a worrying 7,800 people.
For comparison the estimated job loses in the gaming industry for all of 2023 was 10,500.
Are we possibly heading for a second video game crash? Perhaps not on the scale of the video game crash of 1983 in the US but it’s clear that the industry is going to have to change, and change dramatically if it intends to survive.
There’s no crash, all these companies turned over massive profits, they just want more profits. With more people buying any old shit, they can afford to make less games and just fill them with battle passes/MTX etc.
They don’t need creativity anymore, so they can chop that part out of their business. The average quality of game people will buy is at an all time low.
Yeah, it doesnt even make sense. Theyd be laying off people because of a crash, not a crash being caused by layoffs.
And as you said, theyre bringing in massive profits, gaming has never been more popular. Theyre all just trying to bring in some easy profits by not having to spend any money on labor costs. But I think theyre all shooting themselves in the foot with their shortsightedness.
FUCK EA
It’s crazy just how " overstaffed " all these studios were
(I wish I could put more emphasis on the quotes around overstaffed but bold is the best I can come up with)
i guess those employees didn’t buy the season pass?
Best way to capture massive online communities? Cut staff and chase the leprechaun.
Super Massive Games, EA, and Sony, all just in the last 3 days. Collectively ~1700 layoffs.
I would not compare it to 1983 because the circumstances were wildly different. But there’s no doubt that there is a serious crisis in the industry right now. AAA titles are incredibly expensive, investors are skittish because cheap money isn’t a thing anymore, and all of these groups that have been “diversifying their portfolios” with medium to smaller studios are axing them in panic. It’s not great that’s for sure.
The worst part is that the industry would be better if it were only small studios
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God of War is the big AAA I think of too, I agree with your idea! The industry still needs the regular huge releases but soooo much more could be done if most studios were smaller
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Who is the dumbass that made the decisions to over hire by 670 workers?
The board should look into that it would have been more profitable to have never hired them at all, lets fire the ceo and we will bring in a new guy for less pay while we milk this baby for all its worth!
I guarantee you that the first staff to be let go is the hiring staff. If they’re laying off folks, they don’t need them.
But someone above them allocated reqs for people hold those guys accountable if it was a short term hire for a specific program no big deal but many of these hires probably left stable jobs for these ones they are losing.
Video game companies seem to (not a video game worker) hire awesome people at first, treat them well, and cultivate a great atmosphere. Then, the greeds come in and abuse the people who have passion, get cut throat and everyone watches their beloved games go to shit. All while the awesome creative people leave, are fired, or get buried. The whole time, all the money funnels up like the corporate mlm they strive to be.
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