EA has announced that it’s laying off 6% of its global staff as it drops “projects that do not contribute to our strategy.”
Among the biggest companies in gaming, Electronic Arts has “Amazing talent, proven IP and a growing player network.” That’s the good news, anyway, as described by its CEO Andrew Wilson in a January 2023 press release.
Three months on, and Wilson has returned with another announcement: EA is to lay off 6 percent of its staff, which equates to around 750 or more employees across the various arms of its businesses.
In his latest announcement, Wilson outlined some of the thinking behind the layoffs. EA’s teams are “restructuring,” he wrote, as the company moves “away from projects that do not contribute to our strategy.”
“These decisions are expected to impact approximately six percent of our company’s workforce,” Wilson continued. “This is the most difficult part, and we are working through the process with the utmost care and respect. Where we can, we are providing opportunities for our colleagues to transition onto other projects. Where that’s not possible, we are providing severance pay and additional benefits such as health care and career transition services.”
It’s a marked change of tone from EA’s January press release, when it announced its financial results from the third quarter of 2022. As pointed out by Kotaku, the company made a healthy-sounding $7 billion in net revenue in 2022. At the time, Wilson said that EA was “driving record engagement across some of our biggest franchises and growing our player network.”
According to Wilson’s latest announcement, EA began notifying affected staff “earlier this quarter”. EA hasn’t publicly announced which parts of the businesses or projects will be affected by the layoffs.
Nor is EA the only big company announcing major layoffs this week. The Walt Disney Company is reportedly shutting down its entire metaverse division, affecting some 7,000 staff.
Until recently, Disney was still bullish about the metaverse, with reported plans to create a virtual reality sandbox filled with the company’s various characters. Former Disney boss Bob Chapek described it as “the next great storytelling frontier.”
Interim CEO Bob Iger, who replaced Chapek last November, evidently disagrees.
