EA has laid off almost 800 workers, or six p.c of its roughly 12,900-person workforce.
Andrew Wilson, the corporate’s CEO, confirmed the cuts in a weblog publish on Wednesday.
“As we drive better focus throughout our portfolio, we’re transferring away from tasks that don’t contribute to our technique, reviewing our actual property footprint, and restructuring a few of our groups,” Wilson wrote of the layoffs. This follows EA’s cuts of 200 Apex Legends QA testers final month, though it’s not clear if EA is counting some or all of these folks among the many six p.c.
Nevertheless, this all comes simply two months after EA reported incomes roughly $7 billion USD ($9.47 billion CAD) in web income final yr, which works out to $5 billion USD ($6.76 billion CAD) in gross income, an 18 p.c year-over-year improve. In the meantime, Wilson himself earned $19.9 million USD ($26.9 million CAD) in 2022, which was already made to be about half his 2021 wage attributable to shareholders taking challenge along with his government bonuses. For context, EA reported to the SEC that its median worker earnings for 2022 was $115,569 USD ($156,372 CAD), which means Wilson makes roughly 172 instances greater than those that work beneath him, on common.
Within the weblog publish, Wilson says EA is providing eligible workers different roles inside the firm and, “the place that’s not attainable,” offering severance pay and well being advantages to others. It’s presently unclear precisely who amongst EA’s world workforce has been affected by the layoffs. The writer has a number of studios in Canada, specifically, together with a flagship Vancouver campus (FIFA and NHL), BioWare Edmonton (Mass Impact) and the Montreal-based Motive (this yr’s Lifeless House).
For now, Wilson is singling out the success of FIFA 23, which he says is pacing to be the franchise’s largest title, in addition to Apex Legends and The Sims. One month from now, the corporate additionally has Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, the highly-anticipated sequel to 2019’s best-selling Jedi: Fallen Order. Clearly, then, the corporate isn’t hurting, which makes these layoffs all of the extra disappointing.
EA’s layoffs observe many different current cuts within the tech sector, together with hundreds at Meta, Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
Picture credit score: EA
Supply: EA