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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:
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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