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EA Fires 5% of Its Staff

Posted by Zonk on from the when-games-stop-being-fun dept.

JorgeDeLaCancha writes "On the heels of the dispute between EA and Ubisoft, EA has recently announced the decision to fire five percent of their workforce, approximately 350 people. EA's recent announcement has nothing to do with game sales, but rather 'It's more reconciling the costs of learning new systems with what the needs of the new systems are.'"

5 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. atleast they got treated semi-well when laid off.. by tont0r · · Score: 5, Informative

    My friend was one of the people who was cut. He was given a nice severance package. He gets paid like normal until April. When April hits, he gets 1 months pay and gets to cash his vacation hours in. Also during the time between now and April, he still gets more vacation time.

    However, they said he would have to come back the next day to get his stuff from his cube. He wasnt allowed to get it that day. Also, the second he was let go, all his access to the building was removed. I suppose that is just a precaution if the employee goes nuts though. :P

  2. Not fired... by lightspawn · · Score: 3, Informative

    EA lays off 5% of its staff. Big difference.

  3. My boyfriend was also part of that 5% by Hannah+E.+Davis · · Score: 4, Informative

    As one of the more junior guys on the Need for Speed team, it really wasn't surprising that my boyfriend was caught in this round of layoffs. However, I find it a bit ironic that they would lay anyone off on one of their most profitable teams -- Most Wanted was top of the charts in Britain during the Christmas season (beating out even FIFA) and pretty damn popular in Europe and North America. Cutting on the teams that were actually losing money/not making enough of a profit would've made more sense to me.

    He's not too choked up over it, though. I think he's more stressed than he's letting on, but he's been looking at the bright side: they're paying him quite well for the next few months to play the very game that caused their profits to drop *cough*WoW*cough* while he searches for a new and hopefully better job. Given that EA made him work 80+ hours per week last summer, including at least one occasion when he slept at the office on a Sunday night, this is probably a good time for him to find a job with more reasonable hours. Working every weekend for more than half the dev cycle of a game just ain't cool.

  4. Re:Heh. by Phisbut · · Score: 4, Informative
    Actually it is a good thing. Since they don't have their workers signed to a non compete clause they are free to work for another game company. Depending on how the clauses are worded at Ubisoft they would be fired but still unable to work for a competitor (or possibly even do their own game development) for a certain period of time.

    Former Ubisoft-Montreal employee here. Their non-compete clause is only enforceable if you quit, not if they fire you or lay you off or however you call it. It's to prevent developers from willfully going to the competitor.

    --
    After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
    - The Tao of Programming
  5. Re:atleast they got treated semi-well when laid of by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    That's not how it's always been.

    When I was laid off by EA, all I got was two weeks plus vacation, and a month to exercise remaining stock options. And they didn't help me out with the losses incurred by selling my house too fast after buying it, even though I bought it on assurances from one of the bigwigs that the company was fine.

    I will never work in games again, let alone EA, except perhaps as a contractor via a third party. (I actually did that last year -- and not only was the client EA, but the project was one I'd worked on as their employee!)