It didn’t happen this big with the current CEO so far…

Despite having a lower-than-expected previous fiscal quarter, Electronic Arts still pulled in 262 million dollars of net income (and this will likely be even higher with Apex Legends that has since started… but Anthem, which is likely not going to reach the expectations, might balance things out…). Thus, EA decided to lay off people. Hundreds of people. Andrew Wilson, the CEO of the company, has written the following:

„Today we took some important steps as a company to address our challenges and prepare for the opportunities ahead. As we look across a changing world around us, it’s clear that we must change with it. We’re making deliberate moves to better deliver on our commitments, refine our organization and meet the needs of our players. As part of this, we have made changes to our marketing and publishing organization, our operations teams, and we are ramping down our current presence in Japan and Russia as we focus on different ways to serve our players in those markets. In addition to organizational changes, we are deeply focused on increasing quality in our games and services. Great games will continue to be at the core of everything we do, and we are thinking differently about how to amaze and inspire our players.

This is a difficult day. The changes we’re making today will impact about 350 roles in our 9,000-person company. These are important but very hard decisions, and we do not take them lightly. We are friends and colleagues at EA, we appreciate and value everyone’s contributions, and we are doing everything we can to ensure we are looking after our people to help them through this period to find their next opportunity. This is our top priority.”

Take note of the last paragraph in this PR-talk: they laid 350 people off at Electronic Arts, which is almost 4% of the company. Aside from the Japanese and Russian workers, the marketing and the publishing team seems to have taken the biggest hit, and no matter how we look at this situation, it’s a tough decision. (And recently, despite breaking records, Activision Blizzard laid roughly 800 people off…)

Source: WCCFTech