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EA's Profits Up, Workers Get Layoffs
Gamespot and GamesIndustry.biz has the news from yesterday's conference call where EA CEO Larry Probst reported higher earnings for his company in Q3, despite a small yearly decline. He also held forth on the future cost of next-gen games, which in his opinion will likely stay as high as $50 and could perhaps fetch more on retail shelves. Just before this story was to be published, Tim Butler wrote in with the news from 1Up.com that EA was laying off members of its LA studio. From the article: "According to sources close to the company, Electronic Arts is currently in the process of laying off between 50-70 team members from its minty-fresh new EA LA office. The teams affected worked on the poorly-recieved GoldenEye: Rogue Agent and the forthcoming Medal of Honor: Dogs of War FPS titles." Update: 01/27 06:34 GMT by Z : Update to the layoff article: "The first step is to rebalance the team. This has required us to let go 60 people -- from many different teams. There is no focus on any one team or any one class of individuals. It's a studio-wide thing to reset the business fundamentals and get the studio to the next level."
If you had read the friendly article, you would have seen the update:
After speaking to Neil Young, General Manager of the EA LA studio, it's now clear that the confirmed 60 layoffs are not heavily confined to one team or another, countering early rumors that the GoldenEye or Medal of Honor teams were specifically targerted -- countering the implication that the underperformance of certain games might have been the catalyst.
Maybe EA is shaking its developers up for the foreseeable battle with TakeTwo?
And it's undeniable that EA is in a good position to pull this kind of team-balancing stunt, because there are simply too many willing-to-work-25-hours-a-day multimedia graduates. If you come across an apple tree full of apples, you'll surely pick the best ones too.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Don't look at this as a layoff.
This is an invitation to enter the field of merchandising the games they built directly to consumers at the retail level. WalMart, Best Buy and Target are all hiring, and can use people knowledgable about the games themselves.
Seriously, how much money does that company make from building these games? All the hard work, blood, sweat and tears that go into being an EA employee and this is all they have to give their developers. And you know their executives are going to receive higher bonuses this year for trimming the fat.
I guess all we can say is thank you for the nedless hours of high-tech distraction your guys have provided us, at least the gaming community appreciates you.
M
I didn't hear that Rogue Agent did badly. I bought the thing and loved it.. yeah, it had some aspects that were obviously a knock off of halo, but some of it was innovative for an FPS, and parts of it were a hell of a lot of fun.
BOFHs writing games? Yeah right, I hope his ass was canned.
EA is evil. EA represents the suit-and-tie, corporate-owned, mainstream conversion of the gaming industry. They represent cheesy CEOs coming over from other failed companies who are only getting into the game industry because they see massive annual revenues from this thing, not because they're into games. Merely ten years ago, we had a sort of Silver Age of gaming, from Doom to Descent to Command & Conquer to Myst to Simcity 2000 to...well, you were there. It all spanned multiple genres. Where is it now? The good games are far and few between. Now, it's the yearly update of the new Tony Hawk game, complete with skateboard fat clowns that spray graffiti, and the "underground racing" games where morons who think neon lights are a good investment tell each other how "sick" their "tricked out" cars are as obnoxious, over-compressed, repetitive rap music blasts while you race down wet, nighttime city streets. Because that's "underground!" Meanwhile, the PC industry purposely speeds itself up faster and faster to increase the yearly bullshit upgrade cycle. If you don't have a video card with two fans taking up two slots in your translucent, neon-lit PC case, your penis just isn't big enough to play the latest id Software game made up of approximately 90% pitch black darkness on-screen. Innovation? Fuck it, let's fuck up Deus Ex so we can get on the console in time while we destroy Fallout 3. After that, we'll suck the teat of the latest Microsoft DirectX release, focus-group tested with a new name ("DirectNext! Because it's the NEXT one!") guaranteed to generate 87% profit margins on new graphics card updates. And that blazing fast PC you custom-built last year? Fuck it, better ditch that because your goddamn RAM chips aren't operating at a fast enough speed to melt the paint off the wall and generate enough electromagnetic fields to shrivel the balls off your legs as you read the latest paid-for review in a dying game magazine.
I'm bitter about today's PC gaming.
New from EA Games... Sweatshop 2005 where you start a 15 year career as a team manager putting out world class video games. You must keep your team happy-ish, while driving them to the brinks of insanity. New features include 'personal day approval' where you must decide whether letting your multimedia developer go to their mother's funeral is worth the slip in schedule. Transfer team members to other lower performing teams in order to maximize your cost/benefit ratio. Upgrade your staff with 'efficiency experts' for that extra paranoid boost of productivity. Move up the ranks of the corporate ladder while crushing those who stand in your way. Collect praise and bonuses for the slave labor of your subordinates.
I'd play it.
*yawn*
The cynical answer to this would be "no comment." So obvious is business' contempt for education and an honest day's work now that it becomes pointless to even discuss it.
But each time anyone attempts to emphasize the fact that business has turned its back on just about everything except its quarterly earnings, we get "nobody owes you a living so get over it."
The fact is, it is wrong to fire people like this. It is absolutely wrong. These companies are damaging, and in a lot of cases destroying the careers of people who work for a living. It isn't fair and it isn't right.
EA has no problem investing millions and tens of millions to build colossal glittering corporate edifices where they can hold meetings about whom to fire this week. But on payday they claim costs are too high.
W-4 employment is obsolete.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Replying with Microsoft, gets me modded as Funny or Flamebait.
Replying with SCO, gets me modded as either Troll or Insightful.
Replying with IBM gets me modded as Overrated.
So that leaves HP doesn't it? I can't keep up with who is our friend this week on slashdot.
Jonathanjk.com
That being said, after reading all of the crap that EA has been putting their employees through, I refuse to buy a game from them anymore. The last sports game I bought was Tiger Woods Golf 2004 for my PS2, and that WILL be the last game I'll buy from EA. Period. I refuse to give my money to a company that gets away with the slave labor antics and rediculous headcutting that EA has graced us with. While all those 100-hour-a-week programmers get sent to unemployment, EA's CEO still gets his 7-figure salary and a fat bonus. And YES, I realize that my Old Navy jeans are made in China and my polo shirt was made in some third-world country. Exploitation goes on worldwide, and I've come to terms with it. This is just one battle that I choose to let affect my purchasing decisions.
So basically EA, fuck you. I'll take my $100 a year that I would have spent on your products and go to one of the two or three remaining competitors left in console gaming. Or maybe I'll go buy some basement-made games like Uplink instead. Or maybe I'll just say screw you all and go buy used NES games, which still entertain me way more than your 'Sports Title $YEAR' titles ever will. Either way EA, you can kiss my money goodbye.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA. ..."
This is such childish logic.
Of course EA is acting like a business. I am upset about people getting fired in all positions when their company is making profits not because this doesn't benefit the hierarchy within the corporation, this is logical for those at the top who value strength in the stock market as well as long term profits for themselves.
What sickens me is that we live in a world with an economic system where the most logical thing to do when your profits are up is to fire workers.
Just because something is logical for those doing it, does not inherently make it "normal" in the sense that human beings are naturally inclined to do it, nor does it make ethical.
./revolution
future cost of next-gen games, which in his opinion will likely stay as high as $50 and could perhaps fetch more on retail shelves.
... no matter what they have convinced themselves of or how many developers they buy out.
I can already tell you that if every next-gen EA game comes out on the shelves at a $50+ price point, I'll simply turn to other games (or, more slyly, wait until the games appear used - in which case EA gets no profit out of the resale). They may hold certain niches, but they don't own the market
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
Please disengage this childish and silly crusade.
Hey, what's this? Anonymous Coward? Let's see who's hiding behind that mask!
(removes mask from Anonymous Coward)
*GASP* It's some guy hired by EA!
"Yes, and if you hadn't unmasked me, i'd probably had been successful at shutting up those meddling kids!"
Another case solved!
As far as your comment that this is "certainly not stuff that matters to most people here," this is, in fact, important to a lot of people here. This is news that actually affects people. It's certainly much more significant than "Oregon's Governor Backs Open Source Development" or "Running Windows Viruses Under Linux" as I'm sure the number of people who live in Oregon or the number of people who want to run Windows viruses under Linux is much lower than the number of gamers in the world.
It was all I could manage not to mod you down, as I seriously don't think something so uninformed should be modded +5. However, I really don't like to mod people down, so I'm saving my points to mod up more worthwhile comments.
if they laid off ALL their employees, their liabilities would be zero and their profits infinite!
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
The reality, however, is that while hard decisions like this might be very good for the investors in the short term (and hence help boost investment) because of the boost in quarterly profits, in the long term EA is aquiring quite the reputation as a slave driver with no loyalty to people it employs. If EA develops too much of a reputation for that they won't get anywhere near the same employee pool to pick and choose from - the smart people will be staying away. Long term it is potentially gutting the company if they push it too far.
And that, right there, is the big problem that causes so many people to complain about big corporations: They have come to favour short term quarterly profits over long term sustainable profits. If you look at most complaints, from environmental, to labour, to political, when you pare it down it is occuring because companies are considering their short term future but not bothering to look at the long term results.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
I'd like to make an addition to your statement.
Nothing beats a reliable paycheck unless it's a reliable paycheck in a healthy work environment. A good boss is one that lets you get out after you've put in your honest day's work, and also treats you well. The overlords make all the difference.
A wise person makes his own decisions, a weak one obeys public opinion. -- Chinese proverb