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Electronic Arts are laying off roughly 670 employees, or 5% of its workforce and has reportedly cancelled a number of upcoming projects including Respawns Star Wars first person shooter.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson blames the job cuts on ”accelerating industry transformation where player needs and motivations and changed significantly”
He also confirmed that going forward EA will be moving away from licensed IP and concentrating on owned IP, sports titles and games with ”massive online communities”.
EA becomes the third company to lay off a large number of staff this week alone after Until Dawn developers Supermasive Games announced plans to let 90 of its staff go and Sony who are cutting 8% of its staff.
For those keeping score the total layoffs in the first 59 days of 2024 currently stand at a worrying 7,800 people.
For comparison the estimated job loses in the gaming industry for all of 2023 was 10,500.
Are we possibly heading for a second video game crash? Perhaps not on the scale of the video game crash of 1983 in the US but it’s clear that the industry is going to have to change, and change dramatically if it intends to survive.
Best way to capture massive online communities? Cut staff and chase the leprechaun.