According to a report published on the pages of Kotaku, Electronic Arts he fired 100 employees in force at the Austin offices shortly after announcing that from 2023 it will not renew the deal for the FIFA license, with its football series which will be renamed “EA Sports FC”. While the timing is suspicious to say the least, a company spokesperson says the decision isn’t tied to any of its brands in particular.
But let’s proceed step by step. According to an anonymous source from Kotaku, EA would have fired nearly 100 employees dedicated to the “live operations” of FIFA 22. Their task was apparently to offer assistance via email, chat and phone calls to players experiencing problems with microtransactions. Their work will be replaced via outsourcingor by involving third-party companies through tenders.
An internal email addressed to staff written by Joel Knutson, EA’s VP of customer experience and reviewed by Kotaku reads: “we are continually evolving to offer better experiences for our fans and are improving our support model” is that “in order to reduce complexity and increase our efficiency, flexibility and scalability“These roles will be eliminated at the Austin offices and redundancy will be proposed for similar roles for EA’s offices in Galway, Ireland, which provide customer service support.”
Kotaku Deep Throat says the decision was made after numerous complaints from Austin and Galway office employees over wage increases deemed insufficientapparently we are talking about increments of $ 0.10 per hour.
An email sent to Kotaku by a spokesperson for EA claims that such a decision it is not linked to any particular game or brand and therefore it is not a consequence of the divorce between EA and FIFA.
“The changes in our customer support department are not related to any franchise, nor are they related to our EA Sports FC announcement last week. The customer support department supports a wide range of player questions regarding our games, technology, Origin and our EA Play subscription service.“.
In addition, it is announced that 10 job advertisements have been posted for as many positions for the EA mobile games support service, for which dismissed employees can also apply.
Subsequently, EA’s Charlie Fortescue released a further official comment on the affair, which we report below:
“We are always thinking about how to improve our gaming experience, and this includes reviewing how we can best provide the support they may need to fully enjoy it. With this in mind we have proposed some changes for customer support to give more flexibility and support. allow us to help players when they need it most. As part of this process, we are considering changing a number of roles within the team, closing some roles and even creating new ones. We are working closely together with our people throughout this process and we are providing support to anyone whose role is affected.“
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