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Electronic Arts Fires 1,500 Employees

The company will only focus on titles that are “economically viable”

Nov 10, 2009 08:55 GMT  ·  By
The black stands for the mourning period
   The black stands for the mourning period

Electronic Arts has taken some drastic measures to try to mend its financial status. The company has laid off a very large number of its employees from various studios and will continue to do so until March 31. Only just nine months ago did the company do a very similar thing, when 1,100 employees, amounting to 11 percent of its working force, were fired, as EA stated that it was looking to "narrow its product portfolio."

The studios that are affected are EA Tiburon, Mythic, Black Box and even Redwood Shores. The Florida-based Tiburon studio is responsible for the Madden NFL series, while EA Black Box has given birth to several Need for Speed titles. Mythic Entertainment was acquired by Electronic Arts in 2006 and it is the one that developed the Warhammer Online, but it also maintains Ultima Online. Even its headquarters got hit, Redwood Shores, which hosts The Sims teams, but also the Visceral Games studio that is responsible for Dead Space and the upcoming Dante's Inferno.

The first signs of the lay-offs came from the employees themselves, as, now, former EA employee Eron Garcia has posted on his Twitter account a message disclosing that, "Who just got laid off: a. Me, b. Most of my department, c. HUGE chunks of EA, d. All of the Above." One Katherine Pitta also says that, "Mythic Entertainment...just laid of [sic] 80 people, about 40% of it's [sic] employees." EA eventually held a press conference and an official number has been released.

Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello says that 1,500 people will be departing the company that had 8,820 workers on September 30, the lay-off resulting in a 17-percent decrease in the total work force. The new, trimmed-down EA will "provide greater focus on titles with higher [profit] margin opportunities" and, as such, according to Riccitiello "over a dozen" titles have been canceled, though we don't know which these are. "Anything that doesn't measure up to be in a very high profit contributor and unit seller got cut from this point going forward," is the CEO's final conclusion.