Following its decision to cut six percent of its workforce last March, EA has announced another round of layoffs – this time affecting 5 percent of staff (around 670 employees) – as it moves away from “future licensed IP” toward its “owned IP, sports, and massive online communities”.
In an email to staff announcing today's layoffsEA CEO Andrew Wilson said the cuts were part of a continuing effort to “optimise our global real estate footprint to better support our business.”
In order to achieve its goals, Wilson said EA will be “streamlining [its] company operations”, “sunsetting games and moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry”. Additionally, it'll “double down on our biggest opportunities — including our owned IP, sports, and massive online communities”.
As a result, approximately five percent of EA's workforce will lose their jobs, a move Wilson admitted would “create uncertainty and be challenging for many who have worked with such dedication and passion and have made important contributions to our company.”
“While not every team will be impacted,” Wilson continued, “this is the hardest part of these changes, and we have deeply considered every option to try and limit impacts to our teams. Our primary goal is to provide team members with opportunities to find new roles and paths to transition onto other projects. Where that's not possible, we will support and work with each colleague with the utmost attention, care, and respect.”
According to Wilson, EA has already begun “communicating these impacts” to staff, and the process will be “largely completed by early next quarter.” Today's layoffs follow an initial round of job cuts at the publisher last March, believed to have impacted around 775 people, and further layoffs at the EA-owned F1 developer Codemasters in December.
Notably, while Wilson and EA may be looking to move away from licensed IP in the future, the publisher currently has two high-profile licensed games confirmed to be in the works, both based on Marvel properties: Black Panther and Iron Man. An EA representative has told GamesIndustry.biz the two projects remain in development at the publisher. However, in a separate note to EA employees, Laura Miele, president of EA Entertainment and Technology, confirmed the company's strategic shift has resulted in the cancellation of an unannounced Star Wars FPS at Respawn Entertainment and the closure of Battlefield single-player studio Ridgeline Games. Ridgeline's founder, Marcus Lehto, recently departed the Seattle-based studio.
Today's layoffs are only the latest in what's proving to be a devastating 2024 for games industry employees. In a little under two months, over 7,500 workers have lost their jobs, compared to the already substantial 9,000 layoffs seen across the entirety of 2023. This week alone, Sony announced it's laying off 900 employees globally, while Until Dawn developer Supermassive cut 90 jobs , Life is Strange: True Colors studio Deck Nine confirmed it will be laying off approximately 20 percent of its total workforce, job cuts have been reported to Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games, and Saltsea Chronicles studio Die Gute Fabrik revealed it had been forced to halted production, with all team members now looking for new work.
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