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EA sacks 1,500, cans 12 unannounced projects

Posted Nov 10, 2009 at 9:57AM EST by Glenn M.

Listed in: News, Titles Tags: Electronic Arts, John Riccitiello

Shortly after their acquisition of Playfish, Electronic Arts is set to streamline operations, sacking 1,500 employees from different levels, and canning 12 unannounced projects. Speaking in an investor conference call, chief financial officer John Brown gave out the details.

Out of the 1,500 employees to get the axe, 900 are positions in game development, 500 in publishing, and 100 for corporate level. Letting them go will save the company US$ 100 million annually. Laying off employees and closing facilities is never pleasant," said EA CEO John Riccitiello. "We have a lot of compassion for those impacted but these cuts are essential for transforming our company."

It was not clear if teams will remain intact, but Black Box, Redwood Shores, Tiburon and Mythic are all believed to be affected by the layoffs. "We think the cuts we have made are very, very aggressive. "We've cut teams, we've cut corporate, we've cut overhead, we've cut publishing but not to the point of hampering ourselves," Riccitiello said.

Apart from letting a lot of people go, EA was also forced to cancel 12 of its unannounced projects. These projects are the smaller, less profitable games. "So it is really, in a way, if you could array our title slate up knowing what we did about what we would have otherwise brought to market, we cut the bottom third of it."

More on EA and its games:

Via GamesIndustry.biz

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Serves you right for buying off nearly every big name small time dev out there and then not affording to keep them.

Kind of logical to think after we bought there people can we afford them.... In the time I have lived and played EA Games (EA games, challenge everything? :D) I have never understood EA.

# ... — symbal 2009-11-10 16:16

There's 3 things to understand about EA.. Money, Money and Err Money.

# It makes no sense — GUNBEHINDTHESUN 2009-11-10 19:00

I bet some of those people will go to competitors and maybe some of these people will start their own companies and in the future compete with EA.

# ... — symbal 2009-11-10 21:01

They just trimming the fat to cut some costs, they probably keeping the most important talent and most of these 1500 are probably just work-a-day programmers who can be easily replaced if they decide to upsize again.

# ... — Csyrah 2009-11-10 23:10

@symbal

Yeah or maybe they just worship that almighty dollar. "Keeping the most important talent"... ah man, I wish I had something that would give me a good enough buzz so I could actually come close to remotely believeing something like that. Its hard to look back at EAs past games and think "wow, they really have some talented people! EA 4 LiFe!!"

Then again, im sure EA is really feeling the "compassion". Probably cant even mention one persons name alone that they screwed over... but they can tell you how fat there wallet is im sure. But yeah, they should show some compassion. People cant develop good games if they are worried about getting $hit canned every month. Then they loose both the job and the wife. That sucks

# well... — danielakadanny 2009-11-11 06:15

I consider it a good thing because then all this shovelware they plan to release isn't going to sell well anyways so its better that they move the bad games out and put the real attention to the good games

# ... — TheRockness 2009-11-11 09:11

Hopefully these were multiple projects for a hand full of IP's and not 12 individual IP's.

# Hmm. — Neuromancer 2009-11-11 14:52

How can EA talk about compassion for turning people into homeless bums after they obviously have enough money to buy up other companies... "Yeah, we really need to expand our operation... and then immediately cut back."

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