14 DAY TRIAL // We live in some very harsh economic times and the global recession is affecting almost everything around us. Despite analysts' optimistic claims that the crisis won't affect the gaming industry and that everything will be alright, we've already seen a lot of things happen in this field of entertainment. Although the fact that small studios, like Factor 5, would close wasn’t such a surprise, the news that big companies such as Electronic Arts or Sony were implementing drastic layoffs and cost-cutting measures was a bit of a shock.
EA has been affected quite severely and despite the fact that it announced that there wouldn't be too many layoffs, a lot of rumors have been going around speculating about which divisions would be hit. We've already heard that the EA Mobile department has seen quite a lot of people get fired, but the rumor that surfaced a couple of days ago, claiming that people from the Mythic Entertainment studio, makers of the very popular Warhammer Online MMORPG, and EA Tiburon, creators of the hugely successful Madden NFL franchise, would be subject to further layoffs, was a bit hard to believe.
Needless to say, the rumor came true and both studios saw part of their staff being laid off. We've already posted a statement by Mark Jacobs, the president of Mythic Entertainment, in which he said that the job cuts wouldn't affect the studio very much, and now a representative from the EA Tiburon studio, Craig Hagen, comes to talk about the disturbance in the workforce that his company has experienced.
Hagen goes on to say that, “The economy is affecting every industry including ours and we need to tighten our belts and reduce our operating costs.” He also reveals that around 650 to 700 people worked at the EA Tiburon studio and that the upcoming games made there weren't affected by this cost-cutting measure. “Tiburon remains one of the flagship studios for EA Sports and will continue to be the home base for the leading sports franchises like Madden and Tiger and NCAA Football.”
Despite the fact that these studio heads are trying to calm everyone down, a lot of people suffered from the recession and from the measures that EA needed to take in order to ensure that the profit would remain the same. Hopefully, we won't see anyone else get fired by the big corporation.