14 DAY TRIAL // Video game publisher Electronic Arts has announced that it is laying off a small number of employees at its Montreal-based studio and that it is reorganizing it in order to take advantage of new opportunities in the mobile and the social space.
A spokesperson from Electronic Arts has stated, “These are routine changes which address the cyclical nature of the game industry. A very small number of employees will be impacted – many will be assigned to new projects at EA, others will leave the company.”
He added, “Overall, we expect that EA’s headcount will be up at the end of this year.”
This is the kind of standard rhetoric that companies deploy when they are announcing layoffs and the EA spokesperson has not said exactly how many people it plans to make redundant or what new projects its Montreal studio will be working on in the future.
Sources inside the company that 50 jobs will be cut, with some of them transferring to other divisions of Electronic Arts and others leaving for other companies.
Rumors from earlier in 2012 have suggested that the Montreal studio of Electronic Arts has been working on a number of tie-ins, one linked to Dead Space and another to Army of Two.
Both the games were set to use the Frostbite engine that DICE created and were expected to launch during 2013 on home consoles and on the PC.
Electronic Arts has been one of the major publishers that has adopted an expansive and ambitious program of expanding the revenue they derive from digital products, including mobile and social titles.
Both Dead Space and Army of Two are well suited for digital only spin-offs and Montreal might be ready to launch Facebook or free-to-play titles based on them.
Previous EA titles like Dragon Age: Legends and The Sims Online have been solid hits and are still widely played by Facebook users.