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Don Mattrick leaves EA

Posted by Zonk on from the greener-pastures dept.

Jeku writes "Don Mattrick leaves Electronic Arts after 23 years. From the article, a quote from Larry Probst, EA CEO: 'Don would have been on a short list of internal candidates that might move into the CEO role,' Probst said. 'Don came to the conclusion that he was not interested in running a public company. And that he did not want to be doing the same job in five years or ten years.'" More commentary on the exec shakeup over at Gamasutra.

4 of 22 comments (clear)

  1. Sims Movie? by Tringard · · Score: 2, Insightful

    FTA:
    "...the company decided to form the division so that it could concentrate all of the resources necessary in developing "The Sims'' as a property, which could be licensed for things such as toys or movies."

    I can sort of (barely) see toys, but a movie?!? Seems like the fast track to another game-to-movie flop.

  2. Re:So after 23 years.... by dhakbar · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think it may be slightly more likely that he realizes he doesn't like his company any more.

  3. Any EA employees reading? by grumpygrodyguy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Hey EA!

    Fix EAX sound support in BF2 and TEST YOUR GAMES before you release them!

    --
    The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
  4. That's unfortunate.. by daVinci1980 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When I worked at EA as a programmer, I had a chance to meet the e-staff. They were all sort of exactly what I'd expected (having worked for the slave drivers for about 5 months at this point) except for Don.

    He was the one guy on the e-staff who didn't seem to like the way the employees were treated, and didn't really like the way the company was headed. I expect that he's probably going to leave the game industry as well, but that's unfortunate.

    What's truly disheartening about this is that it seems to indicate, from a high-level perspective, acceptance of what has become the standard in the game industry. Churn and burn your employees, there will always be two ready to replace any one that falls. The fact that Don disagreed with this worldview, was likely to take over the largest video game publisher, and decided that he didn't want the job would seem to indicate that he couldn't rectify profitability with employee rights / treatment.

    As they would say at EA, Don Mattrick has left EA to pursue other opportunities. We wish him the best on all his future endeavors.

    --
    I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.