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EA Lays Off 350 People In Marketing, Publishing, And More.

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman
https://kotaku.com/ea-lays-off-350-people-in-marketing-publishing-analyt-1833575289

The video game publisher Electronic Arts is laying off 350 people in marketing, publishing, and other areas, the latest move in what’s been a brutal year for the gaming industry.

In an e-mail to employees obtained by Kotaku, EA boss Andrew Wilson said the goal would be to consolidate the marketing and publishing departments, improve customer support, and change some of its international strategies, a move that includes closing offices in Russia and Japan.

“We have a vision to be the World’s Greatest Games Company,” he wrote. “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.”

“Across the company, teams are already taking action to ensure we are creating higher-quality games and live services, reaching more platforms with our content and subscriptions, improving our Frostbite tools, focusing our network and cloud gaming priorities, and closing the gap between us and our player communities,” he added.

When reached by Kotaku this morning, EA sent over the following statement:

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.”
One person who works in one of the affected departments told Kotaku this morning that these layoffs had been expected for a while now, and that EA had put hiring and travel freezes on marketing for several months. People within marketing and publishing had been expecting a reorganization since at least October, the person said. “I think some people will be relieved to not be in limbo anymore,” they said.
 
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DanielsM

Banned
Not happy for individuals to lose work, but if that company crumbled I would probably have a smirk on my face. (Hopefully those people can find work with real human beings now, EA = soulless, imo)
 

Shagger

Banned
Never happy to see people loose their jobs here. They don't deserve it and my sympathies to them and their families.

However, for EA's sake I'm glad that they are looking in the mirror and seeing what the are doing wrong. They have been ploughing to much money into promotion for their games instead of development for years. I doubt it, but this could be start of a more lean, more efficient business that doesn't have to set such unrealistic monetary goals and shut down development studios as a result costing even more jobs.
 

Stitch

Member
Well you don't need to pay people in marketing when you can just give some random youtuber a million for shilling your game.
 

angelic

Banned
Thanks for your 20 years of service, please accept this 3 month EA access gift card and 20,000 battlefront crystals.
 

Sub_Level

wants to fuck an Asian grill.
Don't let your kids be marketing majors.

Don't mean that with any sort of snarkiness or mean spiritedness. Just sayin.
 

Wimbledon

Member
Honestly i don't think marketing these games was the problem , it was the games living up to the hype. Still 350 people is a lot of people hopefully being freed from the empire will help them in there future endeavors.

Also hopefully they take that higher quality games statement seriously.

 
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Kenpachii

Member
The other 3000 people or how much they are can also better start looking for other jobs or re schooling themselves. That job aint gonna last.
 

Ovek

7Member7
It’s sad to see anyone loose their job but Jesus the PR/Marketing being done at EA for the past two years has been truly awful.
 

NickFire

Member
It doesn't seem they are hurting for money. But it's pretty obvious that they need some new blood in certain areas, especially in marketing. When people in your company start publicly calling your customers misinformed or an ist, someone is not doing their job right.
 

StormCell

Member
So I've taken the liberty of translating this into our language for you all.

“We have a vision to be the World’s most profitable Games Company,” he wrote. “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.”

“Across the company, teams are already taking action to ensure we are creating higher-profiting games and live services, reaching more platforms with our content and subscriptions, improving our Frostbite tools, focusing our network and cloud gaming priorities, and closing the gap between us and our player's wallets,” he added.
 

Ozrimandias

Member
- Dont buy EA games, that company must suffer, we must sink it

* EA Lays down 350 people of the Marketing Department

- Poor people, we must pray for them
 

demigod

Member
- Dont buy EA games, that company must suffer, we must sink it

* EA Lays down 350 people of the Marketing Department

- Poor people, we must pray for them

I don't get why people do this. Why should I feel any sympathy for corporate mules that fucked up badly? Battlefield V sales must've dropped badly for this to happen and the people to blame are the whole company from top to bottom.
 

Winter John

Member
“We have a vision to be the World’s Greatest Games Company,” he wrote. “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.”

Understatement of the year right there.
 

Hissing Sid

Member
‘Marketing and publishing.’

Luckily seeing as the world is currently founded on bullshit, I imagine these peeps will no doubt fall on their feet and find new employment that matches their skill-set pretty quickly.
 

iconmaster

Banned
Today we took some important steps as a company to address our challenges and prepare for the opportunities ahead.

Impaled.jpg


I despise this sort of cheery corporate speak.

I hope these layoffs were diverse.

I really shouldn't laugh at this right now.

But it's pretty darn funny.

Sorry to all affected.
 

Bkdk

Member
Good decision, their marketing department sure isn’t doing their job well and hope they will focus more on game development, with YouTube and twitch the gameplay after game is released will sell or break a game, trailers matter less and less.
 

Ozrimandias

Member
I don't get why people do this. Why should I feel any sympathy for corporate mules that fucked up badly? Battlefield V sales must've dropped badly for this to happen and the people to blame are the whole company from top to bottom.

You dont have to feel any sympathy for EA, but companies are not an entity made by mechanical parts, they are formed by a huge amount of people triying to earn some money, pay the bills, feed their sons, follow some orders by greedy people high in the hierarchy, etc.

When you try to shut down a company, you shut down real people. like it or not
 

Enjay

Banned
This is happy news. No one is gonna starve over losing their overpaying marketing job from EA.
 
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Fox Mulder

Member
"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."

Who even believes this shit.
 

Hinedorf

Banned
Having been laid off and brought back to the same company there's only one mentality to have. When one door closes another one opens. It's a bit disheartening to see the layoffs in other countries as I truly and naively believe in the USA if you're hardworking and have integrity there is always an opportunity for you to find.

Best of luck to them in their searches
 
I feel pretty good about this.
why!!because some people loose their jobs while the ones responsible don't?!,not the ones who work their asses are the problem,but the ones that lead,those are the ones who need to pay,but they don't,so when you will loose your job I want you to know that I will feel good about it.
 
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Ozrimandias

Member
why!!because some people loose their jobs while the ones responsible don't?!,not the ones who work their asses are the problem,but the ones that lead,those are the ones who need to pay,but they don't,so when you will loose your job I want you to know that I will feel good about it.

When a company decide to get some people fired, that company failed, failed in protect his employees, create a place where you can develop all of your capabilities etc.....and the most easy way to solve a problem is to fire someone, simply, you have to tell another, to tell the employee that hes losing the job. Easy. But that directive, get none of the responsability at all.....maybe recieve some angry words of the investors but, thats nothing.
 

wipeout364

Member
The first thing that I think of when trying to improve customer service is to fire customer service representatives, makes total sense.
 
why!!because some people loose their jobs while the ones responsible don't?!,not the ones who work their asses are the problem,but the ones that lead,those are the ones who need to pay,but they don't,so when you will loose your job I want you to know that I will feel good about it.

1. "lose".
2. Please fix your space bar.
3. Losing a job sucks but let's face it, those jobs that were lost we're of little value and mostly fluff. Also EA as a whole deserves all the negativity they have gained; EA sucks.
 

Verdanth

Member
Shitty game (Anthem) sells a buck load thanks to PR and Marketing, lets fire staff from marketing teams.

Good logic.
 

thelastword

Banned
But why? All those MP focused (NON-SP) games which just brings so much revenue in (becasue SP is Dead).....Surely these games should have kept all these folk employed and teeming with milk and honey?
 

StormCell

Member
When a company decide to get some people fired, that company failed, failed in protect his employees, create a place where you can develop all of your capabilities etc.....and the most easy way to solve a problem is to fire someone, simply, you have to tell another, to tell the employee that hes losing the job. Easy. But that directive, get none of the responsability at all.....maybe recieve some angry words of the investors but, thats nothing.

I wish this was true, but it's not. Companies, particularly corporations, have one primary responsibility to their shareholders. Some companies win, and win big, by laying off a bunch of employees while maintaining or improving output. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if EA replaced these 350 positions through more efficient and/or autonomous services. In that light, 350 layoffs is just the beginning.
 

Terce

Member
This announcement makes me feel a sense of pride and accomplishment



The first thing that I think of when trying to improve customer service is to fire customer service representatives, makes total sense.
Also believe it or not this is one of the most common things to do these days because you can reduce CS costs by 40-70% be outsourcing them to a firm overseas. The company I work for just did this, we're saving tens of millions every year, handing off CS duties to a company that focuses on that exclusively, and actually gaining proper analytics into issues and ticket times. Expect every major company to make this move once they run the numbers, there is absolutely no reason not to from their point of view
 
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CyRuZ

Banned
Glad they still had 1mil laying around to pay Ninja. Priorities.

Yeah I know that one million probably mean nothing in the grand scale. Still shows how irresponsible they are by supporting "social influencers" with that amount of money. But maybe they where responsible for such deals in the first place. If so, nothing of value was lost.
 

Teslerum

Member
Don't let your kids be marketing majors.

Don't mean that with any sort of snarkiness or mean spiritedness. Just sayin.

To be fair video game marketing is absolutly dreadful and for some reason seems to attract the worst of the worst.

I mean, as someone working in marketing myself, they seem to do the complete opposite of what marketing is supposed to be and cater to anyone BUT the people who will buy your game.
 
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lukilladog

Member
You dont have to feel any sympathy for EA, but companies are not an entity made by mechanical parts, they are formed by a huge amount of people triying to earn some money, pay the bills, feed their sons, follow some orders by greedy people high in the hierarchy, etc.

When you try to shut down a company, you shut down real people. like it or not

Tell that to EA when they shut down the next studio.
 
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DGrayson

Mod Team and Bat Team
Staff Member
I will never celebrate anyone losing their job but hopefully gaming companies can focus on making awesome games instead of "revenue streams" and "recurrent income" and "player 'engagement'"
 

Fake

Member
I will never celebrate anyone losing their job but hopefully gaming companies can focus on making awesome games instead of "revenue streams" and "recurrent income" and "player 'engagement'"
The problem is that there will always be someone who will say that you celebrate resignation simply because you do not support broken games.
 
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