Mega publisher Electronic Arts has laid off between 300 – 400 people across a number of different areas according to both IGN and Bloomberg. The majority of those affected were in customer service and community engagement roles such within the company but developers were not unaffected by the cuts. At least 100 people at Respawn Entertainment – the developers of the Jedi Surviver games, Alex Legends and Titanfall have been affected.
Speaking of Titanfall, reportedly alongside the job cuts comes news of a cancelled internal project that was in the “incubation” stage – an extraction shooter set within the Titanfall universe. This isn’t the only time the struggling mecha franchise has seen a high profile cancellation as efforts to kickstart the Mech Vs Pilot franchise have been on-going for a while.
“As part of our continued focus on our long-term strategic priorities, we’ve made select changes within our organization that more effectively aligns teams and allocates resources in service of driving future growth,” an EA spokesperson was quoted by IGN.
Other departments across EA were affected aside from Respawn, Customer Care including Marketing and Quality Assurance.
It is not known at the time of publication whether or not these layoffs are related to the ongoing economic instability of The United States or the wholly unnecessary worldwide trade war. The majority of consumer products are not manufactured in North America and this is certainly the case for physical game discs as those are made in countries like China. While it is possible – the majority of these layoffs appear to be within the support or development part of game development and not delivery of the end product.