Cross posted from [email protected]
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.
Super Massive Games, EA, and Sony, all just in the last 3 days. Collectively ~1700 layoffs.
I would not compare it to 1983 because the circumstances were wildly different. But there’s no doubt that there is a serious crisis in the industry right now. AAA titles are incredibly expensive, investors are skittish because cheap money isn’t a thing anymore, and all of these groups that have been “diversifying their portfolios” with medium to smaller studios are axing them in panic. It’s not great that’s for sure.
The worst part is that the industry would be better if it were only small studios
I would like it to be more of an 80/20 situation with 80% being indie->AA and 20% being AAA, because at the end of the day, it’s cool having big tent pole releases like a new Halo (one day they’ll right that ship…) or God of War.
God of War is the big AAA I think of too, I agree with your idea! The industry still needs the regular huge releases but soooo much more could be done if most studios were smaller
Absolutely. I’m one of those weird people who loves most Assassin’s Creed titles haha