EA Lays Off Staff Across All Battlefield Studios Following Record-Breaking Battlefield 6 Launch - IGN
3mon 10d ago by piefed.world/u/Carighan in games from www.ign.com
Always fun to develop a record-selling game. You lose your job as a thanks! 🤮
Did your game do poorly? Straight to unemployment.
Did your game do very well? Believe it or not, straight to unemployment.
Your game did so-so? Also: straight to unemployment.
Reference for the poor unknowing:
Our C-Suite bonuses are high... because of unemployment.
Under-sell over-sell
Classic modern tech company formula. If any records or targets are broken, mass layoffs must happen.
I think MBA schools have forgotten the golden rule of economics: you get what you incentivise for. Guaranteed unemployment isn't it.
This is, unfortunately, just typical of the gaming industry in general.
Effectively for all these game studios, everyone is on contract for the duration of the project. Once that finishes, they fire everyone and let them compete for the next contract. Because the game industry is highly competitive and having "EA" on your resume is impressive, they can get away with this behavior as they can always find more bodies to work. It allows EA to continually pay shit and have a bad working environment because people yern to do something creative.
You make good points about them being contractors and the CV aspects. I'd not thought of that.
But it's not just in gaming. It's all of the tech space, or at least those run by American companies, and applies to full time staff. The last decade or so of my tech career is a mirror image of it.
Though it's hard to tell if it's layoff FOMO, AI changes, or AI being used as an excuse. Something's changed in recent years.
Something’s changed in recent years.
Ever since that fucking idea of the lootbox.
Interest rates are higher so companies have a higher pressure to turn big profits instead of other metrics of success.
I don't think contractors count towards "layoffs".
I've heard the same. If you're in the games industry and you finish shipping usually you're laid off and then you move on to the next project. When a new battlefield comes along they'll just start hiring everyone again whether they worked on the last one or not. It's not really a long-term strategy but they don't care. It's about short-term gains.
You know, a few months before I was laid off at my previous job, they did announce record-breaking year-over-year profits right after I built them a new site, and then they laid me off a few months after that.
Then again, I've been at my current company for a few years now, and they have been announcing record-breaking year-over-year profits over the past 3 years and it's been fine, so I guess it depends lol
It probably does, and I doubt the difference is anything to do with you. (Beyond not sticking your head above the KPI parapet, etc).
The last place I was laid off from was notorious for a LIFO/stack policy whenever heads needed to roll. The one before that looked purely at the highest earners. And the one before that did whatever the nice vulture capitalists told them to do... or else.
None of them looked at how much you made (or retained) for the company, customer and colleague satisfaction, impact on teams or projects. Just "thought leaders" looking at spreadsheets while telling everyone that they know what they're doing. And for the IC it's indistinguishable from Russian roulette.
Yeah, my manager replaced the team with his friends that he hired. It was just a case of nepotism, nothing I did wrong.
At least I have a 30% higher paying job now than I did back then, and this one actually has bonuses that they pay out too.
edit: Just got my bonus, hell yeah.
I've basically just stopped buying AAA games at this point. They are invariably worse quality than indie and AA titles and filled with microtransactions and other predatory bullshit, and the icing on the shit-filled cake is that by buying them you are legitimizing this kind of behavior.
There are just so many good games to play across so many genres that there is no reason whatsoever to buy them, and buying indie games you can feel good about supporting a small dev.
It is especially upsetting to see this news because I remember playing a crapton of Bad Company 2 with my friends in school. All of us got BF3 on launch and played it to death. 4 came out and I know people really liked it but to me it wad just an overly streamlined 3, 1 was cool but a bit too arcadey for me, 5 had no soul and 2042 was clearly just a joke. I hate seeing franchises I loved die through corpo bullshit but there's plenty of other, better, tastier fish in the sea.
Most of the devs from the Bad Company era left EA to form Embark Studios - maybe check out their games like The Finals?
the finals is dope, arc raiders too
Isn't The Finals struggling to keep its players?
I'd say it's more of a dedicated following that just isn't viral. Keep in mind crossplay means that the steam charts aren't an accurate barometer by themselves.
idk, but also don't care, Im enjoying playing it
I was very interested in The Finals when it was announced but something about it after it released kinda turned me off. Arc Raiders I definitely want to try though.
Depends what you define as “AAA”
Baldurs Gate 3, for instance, has no nonsense, and every word out of the director's mouth is “we made this decision because it’s what our developers wanted.” But while the dev team is “AAA” large, Larian doesn’t really fit the mould of Ubisoft, EA, Rockstar, Blizzard or whatever.
I think we need a new designation for what are basically megacorp operations.
I think they self-defined themselves as AAAA because infinite growth has infected their every thought so the number of As must go up too
Wasn't that specifically ubisoft? I might be mistaken though.
I mean honestly aaa at this point to me kinda has an ironic meaning. It just refers to big budget shit titles that have tons of marketing behind them. I would never refer to an actually good game as aaa because the vast majority of aaa studios make bad, buggy, unfinished, and overpriced.
So we call them what they are: megacorp games!
I just don't like the term "AAA." It feels like these mega studios are hiding behind that as a badge of quality.
The Battlefield series are the only games I played from EA. I stopped after 4.
"EA is EA, even if you fried it with butter."
"The game is finished. You are of no use to us any longer, peasants. Begone!"
Anyone who gives EA money is an absolute moron and is part of the problem.
The problem is, they serve the audience garmer non gamer: all sports simulation like: FIFA, NBA, NHL, Madden etc are with them and then games like Battlefield. I know a bunch of people that play these games, but don't consider themselves as gamers and give 0 fucks how the industrie is doimg.
The normies are always the issue
I think at this stage it's children who are easily impressionable and using their parent's credit cards to buy EA games, is the company's customer base. EA hasn't produced a good game for a long awhile. Battlefield games had been the only games I played much before 2020, but since then I stopped caring about EA.
Nah, plenty of grown ass adults who don't care, don't notice or think this counts as progress
I'll admit I still give them money as they have a few of my favorite franchises I grew up with, ME Dragon age, Dead Space.
And these are all turning to shit, besides Dead Space. That was great.
EA execs to the employees:
Thanks for making us a lot of money, unfortunately, we need it more than you, our yacht fuel is expensive. We have to let some of you go. We hope you understand. As a token of our appreciation here's a copy of BF6 and Year 1 Season Pass! Fu.. err thank you for all your hard work and dedication.
That would be nice
As someone who worked in the industry, I can say you often had to FIGHT to get your name in the game credits. And you were lucky if you got a copy of whatever you made, if you did it was months later (likely long after you went and bought a copy because you wanted to play with your friends).
You certainly would not get any free digital content. Maybe a shirt or baseball hat if there were any left over from the launch party (that you weren't invited to because it's only for upper management and investors).
Well shit, here I thought I was window dressing the severance package, but I guess it's actually something they'd enjoy.
Turns out when you make a 100 million active player target it doesn't get hit and they use it as an excuse to fire you. GG.
Battlefield 6 was the best-selling game in the U.S. in 2025.
Wow that's surprising to me considering how it required Secure Boot enabled, which bricked a lot of people's PCs. I installed the beta for my son and thought "there's no fucking way the average gamer is going to be able to do this."
They were probably relying on obnoxious Windows 11 install prompts to carry most of the fight there.
Sadly, in my case it just moved me to Linux…
What do you mean sadly? That's great news
An average teen gamer would move their entire family on Linux if it meant they get their digital crack.
bricked a lot of people's PCs
Did the definition of "brick" in this context change recently, or did secure boot literally destroy people's hardware?
I had to put a jumper on the motherboard to do a hard BIOS reset on my son's PC, and format the hard drive and do a fresh OS install. There are reddit threads and YouTube videos of people doing the same. I consider that bricked, but I suppose your definition could be more extreme.
I didn't know it was that bad. I have seen people using brick to mean they just had to reinstall the OS
"So long and thanks for all the crunch!" - Average EA executive
That's how they keep wages low. After the crunch, they fire anyone they might have to give a raise to. Next game they hire a bunch of new grunts for next to nothing and repeat.
I want to thank you all for making this great game that put us on top last year, but as we're already 3 months in 2026, our management have no clue how to drive this success into bigger one so we went for easy profit. I think we all agree that EA is great company that deserves more this year and sometimes more is less. I wish you all best of luck in looking for next job. Let's make EA great again.
EA makes the best games when the executives get out of the way. Some developers took all of the assets that they had from Battlefront 2 (which was a gorgeous piece of crap) and made one of the best Star Wars flight sims I've ever seen.
EA new logo is "pay everything"
Enshittify Anything
I've had a personal boycott against EA (and Ubisoft, Activision, etc) for over 10 years now and time and time again I get reminded how good of an idea it was.
Also helped by the fact that EA titles are like $100 now and I'd much rather burn that money for a few minutes of heat than give it to the criminals at EA.
Also helped by the fact that EA games just aren't that good. Easiest boycott of my life
And if you absolutely must play one of their games, buy used console games, with the added bonus of keeping their kernel anti cheat shit off your PC.
EA just doing what it's always done... Got it.
That's always been their practice, use up a team until they don't think they'll get anything more from them, then shutter them. You don't go to work for EA for the job security. You work for them because you need a stepping stone...
...Or they bought your studio.
EA is cancer. Don't ever buy from them - you'll get fucked
They chew you, then spit you out. We're basically gum.
people just shouldnt work for ea at all. Even if you do good job you still lose your job.
Always enshittification. Always this is a symptom of late-stage capitalism. The fucks in suits constantly seeking profit.
Anyone who's other than a suit will have to consider learning the trades as a backup, instead of having to chase the next open tech job.
late stage capitalism
You can just say capitalism
Ea Nasir wouldn't do that!
Are games the new copper?
EA wishes they had Nasir's level of quality.
Just punishment for making another FPS for a major corporation. Why they expect anything different at this point baffles me
These layoffs come just months after the unexpected death of Battlefield franchise head Vince Zampella in a car accident. They also come as EA is preparing to be acquired by an investor group composed of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners for approximately $55 billion.
You would think IGN would have budget for basic fact checking but this article was probably written by AI
Edit: this was a bad call by me, it turns out everything appears to be accurate. I just was making assumptions based off of outdated information
You would think that I would do some basic fact checking…
I missed when Vince Z went from Respawn to Dice LA. I retract my claims of AI
Granted, you probably don't have the IGN budget for it
Oh is this one of Mr. Bonesaw's ventures, or a different thing?
We produced a record-profit making game and we couldn't have done it with out you. Now get out and pick up your severance check on the way.
Doesn't EA do this after pretty much every major release? Bring in a ton of part-timers and consultants in the rush to release. Go live with a buggy half-assed product. Fire most of the team to save costs. Then coast on marketing and DLC for a few years, before you kick off the next dev cycle and do it again?
DICE didn't use to do that for BFV, BF1, or even Battlefront 2.
Yeah, but we're on 6
AI games. Fuck over everything.
Battlefield was already refried slop before LLM development was a thing.
I wish we could band together and create a company not with the motive of profit for shareholders, but with the motive of wages for employees.
What if the goal was to hire and pay as many people as much as possible, all while creating something really neat.
How do we start this?
Yeh I'm aware of employee owned and co-cooperatively owned companies, but in my experience those are often used as marketing buzzwords.
I think video game development could actually be a space where this could work, but with the saturation of indie and low effort games, a golden opportunity may have already passed.
Like some else already said co-ops and employee owned businesses. But they all require capital to start, maybe a bank could give you a business loan.
Maybe a government program that doesn't have a profit motive like the post office?
Yeah I think a government sponsored program could actually draw a lot of votes, I know Ms. Harris briefly touched on this with her 20k for small business start ups, but its kind of off mark from what I was proposing.
Step 1: Wake up
Step 2: Realize that people have never been okay with the idea of paying more, they only like to talk about making more (somehow, magically). I feel like rising prices are actually the only thing that can bring down Trump and MAGA, that's how much people hate it
How exactly and why do you expect people to simply pay more for games so that few people could make more money, likely in a different country? I just don't see market working like that.
Besides, how would you even start this without investors? Creating a product takes a long time, and you want to pay high wages while the company makes nothing?
Yeah those are great points to consider.
I hope you have a good day.
It's like the movies industry but here there's still some consumers that pretend to care
Battlefield and COD are just rinse and repeat at this point. They will get AI to change the skin and slightly alter the maps from here on out. Sports games to follow.
COD actually already has been accused of that. A ton of banners and other unlockable 2D UI elements were found to be AI generated. It's entirely possible maps have also already been made by AI, but how would you be able to tell?
Time for everyone else at EA to unionize
Alright fk EA with a rusty spoon
TrIpLe a game publisher doing Triple A game publisher shit... Who the hell still buys EA games?!
That's not good from a player standpoint that seems to suggest that there isn't going to be any updates which is probably why they went the CCG route.
I'm sure they just understand the problems with glorifying warfare in video games marketed to children.
Yet Another common EA L
They just give up to fix the game. Pathetic.
"Congratulations and fuck you !" EA probably.
That explains why we’re up to about 14 multiplayer game modes at the main menu?
I’ll repeat: 14 goddamned multiplayer options. That’s gonna populate all the servers, right?