Always fun to develop a record-selling game. You lose your job as a thanks! 🤮
I want to thank you all for making this great game that put us on top last year, but as we’re already 3 months in 2026, our management have no clue how to drive this success into bigger one so we went for easy profit. I think we all agree that EA is great company that deserves more this year and sometimes more is less. I wish you all best of luck in looking for next job. Let’s make EA great again.
“So long and thanks for all the crunch!” - Average EA executive
That’s how they keep wages low. After the crunch, they fire anyone they might have to give a raise to. Next game they hire a bunch of new grunts for next to nothing and repeat.
EA just doing what it’s always done… Got it.
That’s always been their practice, use up a team until they don’t think they’ll get anything more from them, then shutter them. You don’t go to work for EA for the job security. You work for them because you need a stepping stone…
…Or they bought your studio.
I’ve had a personal boycott against EA (and Ubisoft, Activision, etc) for over 10 years now and time and time again I get reminded how good of an idea it was.
Also helped by the fact that EA titles are like $100 now and I’d much rather burn that money for a few minutes of heat than give it to the criminals at EA.
And if you absolutely must play one of their games, buy used console games, with the added bonus of keeping their kernel anti cheat shit off your PC.
Also helped by the fact that EA games just aren’t that good. Easiest boycott of my life
Battlefield and COD are just rinse and repeat at this point. They will get AI to change the skin and slightly alter the maps from here on out. Sports games to follow.
COD actually already has been accused of that. A ton of banners and other unlockable 2D UI elements were found to be AI generated. It’s entirely possible maps have also already been made by AI, but how would you be able to tell?
These layoffs come just months after the unexpected death of Battlefield franchise head Vince Zampella in a car accident. They also come as EA is preparing to be acquired by an investor group composed of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners for approximately $55 billion.
Anyone who gives EA money is an absolute moron and is part of the problem.
The problem is, they serve the audience garmer non gamer: all sports simulation like: FIFA, NBA, NHL, Madden etc are with them and then games like Battlefield. I know a bunch of people that play these games, but don’t consider themselves as gamers and give 0 fucks how the industrie is doimg.
I think at this stage it’s children who are easily impressionable and using their parent’s credit cards to buy EA games, is the company’s customer base. EA hasn’t produced a good game for a long awhile. Battlefield games had been the only games I played much before 2020, but since then I stopped caring about EA.
I’ll admit I still give them money as they have a few of my favorite franchises I grew up with, ME Dragon age, Dead Space.
And these are all turning to shit, besides Dead Space. That was great.
Nah, plenty of grown ass adults who don’t care, don’t notice or think this counts as progress
That explains why we’re up to about 14 multiplayer game modes at the main menu?
I’ll repeat: 14 goddamned multiplayer options. That’s gonna populate all the servers, right?
EA is cancer. Don’t ever buy from them - you’ll get fucked
I’ve basically just stopped buying AAA games at this point. They are invariably worse quality than indie and AA titles and filled with microtransactions and other predatory bullshit, and the icing on the shit-filled cake is that by buying them you are legitimizing this kind of behavior.
There are just so many good games to play across so many genres that there is no reason whatsoever to buy them, and buying indie games you can feel good about supporting a small dev.
It is especially upsetting to see this news because I remember playing a crapton of Bad Company 2 with my friends in school. All of us got BF3 on launch and played it to death. 4 came out and I know people really liked it but to me it wad just an overly streamlined 3, 1 was cool but a bit too arcadey for me, 5 had no soul and 2042 was clearly just a joke. I hate seeing franchises I loved die through corpo bullshit but there’s plenty of other, better, tastier fish in the sea.
Depends what you define as “AAA”
Baldurs Gate 3, for instance, has no nonsense, and every word out of the director’s mouth is “we made this decision because it’s what our developers wanted.” But while the dev team is “AAA” large, Larian doesn’t really fit the mould of Ubisoft, EA, Rockstar, Blizzard or whatever.
I think we need a new designation for what are basically megacorp operations.
I think they self-defined themselves as AAAA because infinite growth has infected their every thought so the number of As must go up too
The Battlefield series are the only games I played from EA. I stopped after 4.
Most of the devs from the Bad Company era left EA to form Embark Studios - maybe check out their games like The Finals?
the finals is dope, arc raiders too
Isn’t The Finals struggling to keep its players?
I’d say it’s more of a dedicated following that just isn’t viral. Keep in mind crossplay means that the steam charts aren’t an accurate barometer by themselves.
Did your game do poorly? Straight to unemployment.
Did your game do very well? Believe it or not, straight to unemployment.
Your game did so-so? Also: straight to unemployment.
Reference for the poor unknowing:
Under-sell over-sell
“The game is finished. You are of no use to us any longer, peasants. Begone!”
Classic modern tech company formula. If any records or targets are broken, mass layoffs must happen.
I think MBA schools have forgotten the golden rule of economics: you get what you incentivise for. Guaranteed unemployment isn’t it.
This is, unfortunately, just typical of the gaming industry in general.
Effectively for all these game studios, everyone is on contract for the duration of the project. Once that finishes, they fire everyone and let them compete for the next contract. Because the game industry is highly competitive and having “EA” on your resume is impressive, they can get away with this behavior as they can always find more bodies to work. It allows EA to continually pay shit and have a bad working environment because people yern to do something creative.
You make good points about them being contractors and the CV aspects. I’d not thought of that.
But it’s not just in gaming. It’s all of the tech space, or at least those run by American companies, and applies to full time staff. The last decade or so of my tech career is a mirror image of it.
Though it’s hard to tell if it’s layoff FOMO, AI changes, or AI being used as an excuse. Something’s changed in recent years.
Interest rates are higher so companies have a higher pressure to turn big profits instead of other metrics of success.
Something’s changed in recent years.
Ever since that fucking idea of the lootbox.
I don’t think contractors count towards “layoffs”.
I’ve heard the same. If you’re in the games industry and you finish shipping usually you’re laid off and then you move on to the next project. When a new battlefield comes along they’ll just start hiring everyone again whether they worked on the last one or not. It’s not really a long-term strategy but they don’t care. It’s about short-term gains.
They chew you, then spit you out. We’re basically gum.
