SAN FRANCISCO — Electronic Arts, the video game company, said it would lay off 1,500 workers and shrink its product lineup, even as it announced that it had acquired Playfish, a start-up that makes online games.
This year has been a difficult one for Electronic Arts and for the game industry as a whole because of the sharp drop in consumer spending. The company, which makes popular games like the Madden, Rock Band and Sims series, has already made deep cuts in staff and its roster of games this year.
The company said the new job cuts were equivalent to 17 percent of its work force. It plans to cut its staff and close several offices by March 31. In a conference call with analysts, executives did not say which game titles they would cut, but that games in the bottom third in sales were at risk and that some games in development would be canceled. The cost-cutting plan would save at least $100 million this year, the company said.
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That's a pretty significant layoff. 17% of your staff isn't anything to be sneezed at. I wonder if the support for their games is going to get poorer (as I think it will).
I kinda have a bad impression of EA since it took over Origin and ruined Ultima Online.
From what I've been following of the game industry in Game Informer magazine, EA has really been working hard to change their image.(They actually had a 8 or so page story wholly about EA a couple months ago) In the late nineties and early 2000s EA was viewed as(and actually was) the typical corporate giant that would out muscle some smaller companies, while working with others. The ones it worked with typically had a year at most before being bought out and absorbed.
EA has done some restructuring and has found it to be more profitable to simply support the creativity of small developers with it's massive advertising and production wings. With the advancement of technology, games are more in depth than ever and the market has been rewarding creativity and talent(generally) more than before because the gap between good and bad games is more pronounced. In the last few years we've seen EA become less of a corporate beast and more of an asset to smaller developers. (They've actually formed a whole branch devoted only to these means that has done better than anyone predicted)
I digress... I'd imagine that the restructuring if not directly responsible for some of the layoffs, it will certainly lead to some jobs staying and others being eliminated that wouldn't have been so a decade ago.
To criticize a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous, but to criticize their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticize ideas, any ideas - even if they are sincerely held beliefs - is one of the fundamental freedoms of society. A law which attempts to say you can criticize and ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed. -Rowan Atkinson Cystic Fibrosis Foundation
There are many rumours about EA out there. Apparently the working conditions were often so awful that many people quit after their first project there, only to be replaced by new young and naïve developers that happily accept terrible pay and hours in order to get a foot in "the industry". Then there were lawsuits against EA for unpaid overtime, so I'd expect they actually have to give the workers a decent pay now. That probably factors in a large bit here.
I suppose it's also possible they're removing all redundant "manager" positions. Supposedly they can have several managers for every actual developer...
"Nippon ichi, bitches! Boing-boing." Mai smote the demonic fires of heck...
Tritio wrote:Is it that bad? Where did you hear that from, and how much of that is publicized/documented? I'd be interested in reading it if you have any stories.
On a semi-related anecdote, I took a tour of both the EA and Ubi soft offices in montreal last year, Ubisoft seemed like a pretty fun/sweet place to work,
EA seemed like a prison.
Evil will always triumph over good, because good, is dumb
I just heard this morning that a friend of mine who works at Mythic Entertainment (which belongs to EA) just got laid off. Two years ago he uprooted his family to Virginia to work there. I've been feeling bad for him all day.
Tritio wrote:Is it that bad? Where did you hear that from, and how much of that is publicized/documented? I'd be interested in reading it if you have any stories.
The lawsuits for unpaid overtime a few years ago are well-known. The part about the managers is just a rumour, but I think many large companies have similar problems (or are claimed to have similar problems). The context of the thing was, I think, that an artist wanted to talk to the programmers about something, but he had to go to his manager, who in turn had to go to the lead graphics manager, who had to go to the project manager, who could go to the lead programmer, who in turn could talk to the relevant programmer.
"Nippon ichi, bitches! Boing-boing." Mai smote the demonic fires of heck...
Between EA's history as an unloving corporate giant and its attempts to focus more on publishing and less on developing, it's certainly going to be very different from workplaces like UbiSoft or Mythic.
Developers try, and actually need, to foster that relaxed and creative environment. Publishers aren't usually as cuddly. EA's internal developers in the past haven't been given such luxuries and the generally poor success of it's games highlight this.
Acquiring smaller developers years ago and trying to just roll them into it's already bloated and unsuccessful development wing was just setting the stage for large layoff numbers when the industry or economy took a turn for the worse.
To criticize a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous, but to criticize their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticize ideas, any ideas - even if they are sincerely held beliefs - is one of the fundamental freedoms of society. A law which attempts to say you can criticize and ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed. -Rowan Atkinson Cystic Fibrosis Foundation
Dooey Jo wrote:The lawsuits for unpaid overtime a few years ago are well-known.
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Holy shit, that's bad! A 7 day, 11 hour per day workweek? Outch! That's lunacy.
Koolaidkirby wrote:On a semi-related anecdote, I took a tour of both the EA and Ubi soft offices in montreal last year, Ubisoft seemed like a pretty fun/sweet place to work,
Dooey Jo wrote:The lawsuits for unpaid overtime a few years ago are well-known.
...
Holy shit, that's bad! A 7 day, 11 hour per day workweek? Outch! That's lunacy.
Koolaidkirby wrote:On a semi-related anecdote, I took a tour of both the EA and Ubi soft offices in montreal last year, Ubisoft seemed like a pretty fun/sweet place to work,
EA seemed like a prison.
Would you like to elaborate?
Ubisoft office had significantly better break rooms, full time doctor on staff,nap room, day-care and other benefits ect, generally nicer/warmer feeling office all around, and the people seemed more cheerfull overall ect.
Evil will always triumph over good, because good, is dumb
That's a pretty significant layoff. 17% of your staff isn't anything to be sneezed at. I wonder if the support for their games is going to get poorer (as I think it will).
I kinda have a bad impression of EA since it took over Origin and ruined Ultima Online.
Not as bad as how they ruined the Command & Conquer series.
Is it me, or the quality of PC games these days are inversely related to the size of the studio/game company?
It's more related to the size of the investment and the need for profits. Small companies with little at stake can take risks and try new stuff, large companies are usually limited by their shareholders' expectations and can't risk it, hence the amount of safe and marketable titles they pour out.
That's a pretty significant layoff. 17% of your staff isn't anything to be sneezed at. I wonder if the support for their games is going to get poorer (as I think it will).
I kinda have a bad impression of EA since it took over Origin and ruined Ultima Online.
Not as bad as how they ruined the Command & Conquer series.
Is it me, or the quality of PC games these days are inversely related to the size of the studio/game company?
The C&C4 team is supposedly being entirely laid off following completion of development of the game. Doesn't seem like there will be post-release support. Not sure if they'll let the franchise die for a while - C&C4 is meant to be a conclusion to the Tiberium story.
EA's still paying the price for it's years of mismanagement of its acquisitions. It's bought so many companies over the years and by trying to force these divergent company cultures to become EA it's just led to the staff leaving. Westwood and Bullfrog are good examples. They laid off masses of developers last year too, it's not an effective long-term strategy.
