EA is sacking 350 employees, or round 4% of its “9,000-person company.” The layoffs will have an effect on its advertising, publishing, and analytics departments, amongst others. The information follows much more extreme layoffs at rival Activision-Blizzard, which sacked virtually 800 staff – round 8% of its workforce – in February after a troublesome monetary quarter.
According to Kotaku, EA staff have been advised of the upcoming layoffs in emails from advertising director Chris Bruzzo and one other from CEO Andrew Wilson. “We have a vision to be the world’s greatest games company,” Wilson’s email allegedly reads. “If we’re honest with ourselves, we’re not there right now. We have work to do with our games, our player relationships, and our business.”
In an announcement despatched to Kotaku, and allegedly in these emails, EA says it has “made changes to our marketing and publishing organisation, 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.”
Kotaku’s Jason Schreier added to the story on Twitter, citing a supply at EA who claims the advertising division had been anticipating some unhealthy information “for months now” after a freeze on hiring and journey, and had been in a state of “limbo”.
The layoffs bear a hanging similarity to these at Activision-Blizzard, each within the departments they affected and within the uncertainty that preceded them. It can’t be nice to return to work below these situations. At least these layoffs appear to not have been fairly as sloppily dealt with as these at Telltale.
We’ve requested EA for additional readability on the phrases of the layoffs with respect to severance and ongoing help. Our easiest needs to all affected.
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