EA is doing its thing again — and by that, I mean laying off people. Hundreds, actually. Something like 100 folks just from Respawn Entertainment. Ugh. And that’s not all; they’ve canned a few projects that were still cooking. One of those was supposed to be a new Titanfall game — which, by the way, is sad news for fans.
So, Jason Schrier over at Bloomberg wrote about this first. He chatted with some folks in the know, and they spilled the beans: about 300-400 staff got the axe. I reached out to EA for their side of the story, and they came back with one of those classic corporate lines:
“We’re focusing on long-term blah blah… strategic priorities… ” You know the deal. Something about reallocating resources to “drive future growth.” Whatever that means. Meanwhile, Respawn had their own thing to say. They put out a pretty lengthy statement on what went down. Seems they’ve shuffled teams around in Apex Legends and Star Wars Jedi, whatever that means.
Oh, and there were two projects they had to cancel, which they were pretty bummed about. They did say they’re giving the sacked folks some “meaningful support,” whatever that’s supposed to include. One of these projects was code-named R7 — apparently a Titanfall-themed extraction shooter. Man, this is like déjà vu, considering another Titanfall project got scrapped in 2023.
Here’s the kicker: While all this is happening, EA’s top dogs are still pocketing big bucks. Eurogamer pointed out last year that those bigwigs walked away with 60 million smackers — all while people’s jobs were on the line.
So, what do you reckon? Think the folks at EA are ever gonna catch a break? Would love to hear what you think.