In a string of seemingly endless lay-offs affecting the games industry this year, EA is the latest company to make cuts. Over 350 employees working in Marketing, Publishing and several other areas have been laid off.
According to an email, obtained by Kotaku, the lay offs come as a result of marketing and publishing department consolidations that occurred last year, and would be necessary to “streamline communication” within the departments. As well, EA felt that the move was a necessary one in order to improve customer support. And finally, changes to their international strategies would include closing offices in Russia and Japan.
EA is currently working on strategies to ensure the transition for affected employees is as smooth as possible, as the company is offering severance and other resources to employees who are leaving, and are working with employees to try an place them in roles in other areas of the company. Specific details regarding these actions have yet to be disclosed.
EA released the following statement earlier today:
“Today we took some important steps as a company to address our challenges and prepare for the opportunities ahead. As we look across a changing world around us, it’s clear that we must change with it. We’re making deliberate moves to better deliver on our commitments, refine our organization and meet the needs of our players. As part of this, we have made changes to our marketing and publishing organization, our operations teams, and we are ramping down our current presence in Japan and Russia as we focus on different ways to serve our players in those markets. In addition to organizational changes, we are deeply focused on increasing quality in our games and services. Great games will continue to be at the core of everything we do, and we are thinking differently about how to amaze and inspire our players.
“This is a difficult day. The changes we’re making today will impact about 350 roles in our 9,000-person company. These are important but very hard decisions, and we do not take them lightly. We are friends and colleagues at EA, we appreciate and value everyone’s contributions, and we are doing everything we can to ensure we are looking after our people to help them through this period to find their next opportunity. This is our top priority.”
It should be noted that according to their final quarterly financial report for last year, EA experienced “strong growth”, with
