Electronic Arts (EA) on Thursday announced the immediate layoff of workers from its Los Angeles and Montreal game studios. The company has also fired workers at some of its other “smaller locations” which were not specifically named in a press release from EA Labels president Frank Gibeau
In the release, Giebeau revealed:
“Thousands of our existing employees have been retrained and redeployed to work on the new platforms and initiatives. But when it is not possible to redeploy a team, we soften the tough decisions with assistance,”
The EA Labels president then added:
“This week we let some people go in Los Angeles, Montreal as well as in some smaller locations. These are good people and we have offered outplacement services and severance packages to ease their transition to a new job.”
At this time, EA has not announced which developers have been fired and to what extent those firings go in terms of employee numbers.
EA has not yet returned calls for clarification.
The announcement comes at a time when many gaming companies have realigned themselves for the mobile and tablet space. However, the news also arrives just as the Sony Playstation 4 (PS4) made its official debut.
Do you think traditional gaming company’s such as EA are in trouble, or will they ultimately find ways to monetize a changing gamer atmosphere?