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Report: EA About to Let Go 500-1000 People

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Comments

  • SouldrainerSouldrainer Member Posts: 1,857

    Originally posted by Antarious

    Originally posted by Souldrainer


    Originally posted by bobfish

    The update makes it sounds like they are letting go of a lot of "old school" developers and hiring a new breed of digital gurus.

    Less focus on your standard boxed title for console/PC and more focus on online/mobile gaming.

    As I stated, they shut down a bunch of old games a few days ago... it's a direct cause and effect.. unrelated to SWTOR.

     

    I know Kotaku hates SWTOR because it's not from NC Soft, where they get most of their MMO revenue, but at the end of the day, we don't even know how SWTOR is doing.  It might be booming or failing, for all we know.  If I had to speculate, I would say somewhere in between.

     

    Were this news actually related to SWTOR, it would be BIOWARE layoffs.....

     

    What you stated was that EA has 70,000 employees

     

    As I stated EA http://www.ea.com/about says it has 9,000

     

    Pretty much what I get out of this is.. you have no clue what you are talking about.   Anyway.. have a good day.

     

    You could also list all these old games and servers EA just shut down.. because EA is also unaware of those.

    http://www.gamespot.com/news/ea-shutting-down-over-a-dozen-game-servers-6366856 

    #1  ^^ you being wrong^^  ^^was published on a few hundred sites^^

    I was throwing out numbers to make a point that losing a few thousand employees for a big company is not a big event.  Actual numbers were, and are, play money.  It's not important to my point, at all.  It should be implied that I was speaking figuratively.  If not, oops.

    It's still not relavant to SWTOR.  Or, was this because of SWTOR too?

    http://news.softpedia.com/news/Electronic-Arts-Fires-1-500-Employees-126527.shtml 

     

    EA is EA, Bioware is Bioware, and SWTOR is SWTOR... only very rarely is news about the former even remotely related to the other two.

    Error: 37. Signature not found. Please connect to my server for signature access.

  • ste2000ste2000 Member EpicPosts: 6,194

    I knew that Riccitiello (EA CEO) was lieing, or at least he was economical with the truth claiming the 1.5 Million subscribers

    When I left SWTOR, my server felt empty, but during peak time it was flagged as FULL..............

    If the game has 500K subscribers now they are lucky, but my guess is that RIFT has more subscribers than SWTOR at the moment.

    I feel for the people who are going to lose their job, because are always the hard working people who pays for the fat cats mistakes (Riccitiello)

    They need to fire the whole marketing department and hire more creative who can make original games

    I really hope that EA will never be able to put their hands on Bethesda, the only big indipendent game company left after Bioware.

    It would be another disaster for the gaming industry

  • RodimusPrimeRodimusPrime Member Posts: 114

    Originally posted by ste2000

    I knew that Riccitiello (EA CEO) was lieing, or at least he was economical with the truth claiming the 1.5 Million subscribers

    When I left SWTOR, my server felt empty, but during peak time it was flagged as FULL..............

    If the game has 500K subscribers now they are lucky, but my guess is that RIFT has more subscribers than SWTOR at the moment.

    I feel for the people who are going to lose their job, because are always the hard working people who pays for the fat cats mistakes (Riccitiello)

     Actually it was 1.7 million subscribers and if you think that the game only has 500k and is lower that Rift we can always compare it's xfire position to SWTOR.

  • HurvartHurvart Member Posts: 565

    Originally posted by RodimusPrime

    Originally posted by ste2000

    I knew that Riccitiello (EA CEO) was lieing, or at least he was economical with the truth claiming the 1.5 Million subscribers

    When I left SWTOR, my server felt empty, but during peak time it was flagged as FULL..............

    If the game has 500K subscribers now they are lucky, but my guess is that RIFT has more subscribers than SWTOR at the moment.

    I feel for the people who are going to lose their job, because are always the hard working people who pays for the fat cats mistakes (Riccitiello)

     Actually it was 1.7 million subscribers and if you think that the game only has 500k and is lower that Rift we can always compare it's xfire position to SWTOR.

    If people playing are complaining about empty servers that is way more valid than numbers that are guesses and speculation.

    If you play on a empty server will it really help if some PR-guy claims its healthy?

  • ZefireZefire Member Posts: 676

    who cares about ea seriously?

  • wyldmagikwyldmagik Member UncommonPosts: 516

    wow anyone aware how many staff were working on this title due to the size of the money involved :D

    And of course with you all being such avid mmorpg forum dwellers the news should not be of any shock to you because you all know right that after a major release the teams of that size in such a large project are cut right back and moved onto other things?

     

  • RodimusPrimeRodimusPrime Member Posts: 114

    Originally posted by Hurvart

    Originally posted by RodimusPrime

    Originally posted by ste2000

    I knew that Riccitiello (EA CEO) was lieing, or at least he was economical with the truth claiming the 1.5 Million subscribers

    When I left SWTOR, my server felt empty, but during peak time it was flagged as FULL..............

    If the game has 500K subscribers now they are lucky, but my guess is that RIFT has more subscribers than SWTOR at the moment.

    I feel for the people who are going to lose their job, because are always the hard working people who pays for the fat cats mistakes (Riccitiello)

     Actually it was 1.7 million subscribers and if you think that the game only has 500k and is lower that Rift we can always compare it's xfire position to SWTOR.

    If people playing are complaining about empty servers that is way more valid than numbers that are guesses and speculation.

    If you play on a empty server will it really help if some PR-guy claims its healthy?

     I am playing, not on an empty server though. Do I think they have lost some people, yes, do I think they could consolidate some servers, yes, do I think it as dramatic as some people here , no.

  • UnlightUnlight Member Posts: 2,540

    Originally posted by Distopia

    Originally posted by sk8chalif

    Haha, we all saw this coming,  lucky i don't work for them anymore,

    This type of response will always boggle me, it seems somewhat sadistic IMO. To be clear I understand disliking corporations, but getting your jollies off of others loss of employment is just not right.  Most of those people are just doing what they're told to do like any other employee. You can bet most of those truly responsible will still be coming to work the next day, making as much as 10-20 of those others combined.

    I doubt anyone is cheering that people are losing their jobs.  The delight is in knowing that EA is bleeding.  Yes, there is a difference and yes, you *do* know that.

  • NeoZcar2NeoZcar2 Member Posts: 136

    I fidn it funny that Souldrainer still thinks Bioware is its own company... Bioware never had anything to do with SW:TOR... EA created a studio in Austin called EA Austin and renamed it Bioware Austin when it began production on SW:TOR because it simply cannot sell games effectively under its own name. There is only one real Bioware studio and it is in Canada. Everyone who worked on SW:TOR got a paycheck with the name EA on it.

  • GMan3GMan3 Member CommonPosts: 2,127

    Originally posted by Distopia

    Originally posted by William12

    Originally posted by Bardus 

    Originally posted by DarkPony

    Wouldn't surprise me, but yeah ... rumor.

    Not sure if it has to do so much with actual sales though. The amount of copies sold at launch and around 1.7 mil subs in the first few months (though I am unsure what they are now), is still a hell of a lot of money. And running a launched game requires much less people compared to developing one. So if they have too much developers for the amount of projects in the pipeline, layoffs like that are unavoidable.

    Don't leave out what Lucas gets. I have no proof of percentage but have seen claims of 35%. If it's true and you can bet it's substancel whatever it is, it's cutting big into EA's profits.

    Which is exactly why Smed said working with a 3rd party IP is not a good idea its restrictive and they make the money not you.

    If I remember correctly the case was a bit different for SOE, in that LA was actually the publisher of SWG. I thought I read early on that LA was merely supplying the licensing and of course charging for it, and EA/Bioware self-published it.


        Exactly, which keeps a lot more of the profits with EA / BioWare and LA earning a lot smaller of a percentage since there is no "work" done.  Anyways, this 35% is nothing but RUMOR (and likely a highly inflated one) just as the layoffs are nothing but RUMOR.  Until I see something official, I will have to remain very skeptical on both accounts.  Just as I was with the debunked and self admitted liar EALouse.

        Even so, a "trimming of the fat" would not surprise me.  Like it was said in a previous post, there are a lot of contractors involved in creating games and letting some go after a game is live is actually an industry standard.  Anyone that doesn't know that has been keeping their head buried in the sand for a long time.  Also keep in mind that SWTOR was not the only game released by EA last year.  So more that one project trimming the fat could make for some very large numbers.  Especially if EA feels it would be cheaper to hire NEW contractors for a new project rather than keep older ones around by shuffling people to new projects.

    "If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"

  • DarSepkiDarSepki Member Posts: 51

    Originally posted by NeoZcar2

    Souldrainer sigh.....It means everything... You dont understand how a corporation works... They bet everything on a major project and when it fails they have to shut down smaller less "important" but still profitable projects to sidebar thier assets to stay afloat.

     

    In December 2010 EA had just over 10,000 employess and laid off 1100 and shut down 12 studios. You are absolutly insane if you think the company grew 700% in less then 2 years time. 

    This very well is what will be happening.

    The company that I now am working for has been making bad decission after bad decission, very much like EA. Our contract, who has been performing above expectations have been targeted and stripped down over the years. This year they lose this contract. This should have been a wake up call for corporate but they felt it was more important find ways to shift blame to the employees for "under performing". In the latest round of employee evaluations, HR was directed that our contract be rated overall low. Meaning, individual performance evaluations were artifically reduced.

    I do not see them removing too many people from the SWTOR dev team, just enough to shift the blame to. The company as a whole will then start blaming the less "important" projects for not performing the way they need to.

    I am sorry to see this happen to anyone, but best luck to all those affected. Perhaps we will see more independant studios come out of this, away from this mega-corporation greed.

  • obiiobii Member UncommonPosts: 804

    "While the quality of EA games has most definitely improved, the costs to produce these games and Riccitiello’s acquisition warpath have only hurt the bleeding."

     

    Ea games have improved?

    As for the layoffs - That is normal with EA. If you have followed them for a few years then they always lay off people in waves.

    The cynic in me would claim that the reason EA has not laid off some of the swtor team after release was that even EA knew it was unfished :P

    On the other hand I believe that only continued content will keep swtor alive and that needs a big team.

  • RefMinorRefMinor Member UncommonPosts: 3,452
    Originally posted by RodimusPrime


    Originally posted by ste2000

    I knew that Riccitiello (EA CEO) was lieing, or at least he was economical with the truth claiming the 1.5 Million subscribers
    When I left SWTOR, my server felt empty, but during peak time it was flagged as FULL..............
    If the game has 500K subscribers now they are lucky, but my guess is that RIFT has more subscribers than SWTOR at the moment.
    I feel for the people who are going to lose their job, because are always the hard working people who pays for the fat cats mistakes (Riccitiello)

     Actually it was 1.7 million subscribers and if you think that the game only has 500k and is lower that Rift we can always compare it's xfire position to SWTOR.

     

    Actually Riccitello only ever claimed a "vast majority" of the 1.7m, it was The CFO who a month earlier in the earnings call that claimed the 1.7m subs at Dec 31st. So 1.5m is a reasonable estimate of Riccitellos claim for subs from Jan 20th to Feb 20th.
  • RefMinorRefMinor Member UncommonPosts: 3,452
    Originally posted by cinos


    Originally posted by RodimusPrime


    Originally posted by cinos



    Originally posted by RodimusPrime


    Looks like SWTOR sold another million copies since their earning call on dec 31.

    Just fyi, that's an estimate from an outside source. Not official numbers.

     So the rumor firings is ok to post but not the also rumored increase in sales in the same article?

    Yep, that's exactly what I said. Wasn't just pointing out to you that the number is merely a guess, seeing as you appeared to be taking it as fact. I definitely had ulterior motives for pointing that out to you.

    Tbh, I'd be extremely surprised if they hadn't sold another million copies in the 4 months since launch, considering the ip and all.

     

    Wow, I would have expected half that, their retention rate must be even more abysmal than thought.
  • AusareAusare Member Posts: 850

    unless you know where these people are coming from it is hard to know the situation of the company.  Could be people from acquired development teams where EA only wanted the name and not the team.

  • SlampigSlampig Member UncommonPosts: 2,342

    Originally posted by Bardus

    If you go to http://startupgrind.com/ the is claiming confirmed.

    "Exclusive: I’ve confirmed from multiple sources within Electronic Arts that the company is planning to layoff 500-1,000 people as soon as this week. As of March 31 public numbers, that represents between 5%-11% of total company employees. The layoffs were originally set for last Monday (4/9), but they were pushed back and we’ve confirmed they’re coming very soon.

    After a brief resurgence, EA has had a rough year with Star Wars not matching lofty internal expectations, an expensive Popcap acquisition, a CFO departure, and being recently named the worst company in America.

     

    While it looked like a possible banner year, over stretching on several fronts led to a disappointing fiscal year. Estimates put Battlefield 3 sales around 13MM units, the company ‘chased’ the launch dumping an estimated $30MM into incremental marketing after the game launched according to one source within EA. The same thing was done for Star Wars to extend its run and try to improve sales. Star Wars sell through is estimated to now be around 3MM units, but the subscriptions which are needed for an MMO to payoff are already declining.

    It’s also another big blow to EA CEO John Riccitiello who this month marked his fifth year since returning to EA. I was working at EA and sat in the all-hands meeting to mark his triumphant return in 2007. While the quality of EA games has most definitely improved, the costs to produce these games and Riccitiello’s acquisition warpath have only hurt the bleeding.

    Not to mention a stock price that has moved from $61 to where it sits now at $16, it’s safe to say that Riccitiello’s time is once again running out. On top of all this, Zynga has gutted EA’s management listing 5 of the top 11 executives as former EA senior managers including the COO, CMO, CCO (Creative), CPO (People), and the EVP of Corp Dev. Glassdoor.com puts his internal CEO rating at 53%, no where some Silicon Valley companies like Google (92%) or Yelp (89%) while similar to other CEOs in his category."

     

     

    UPDATE - EA has issued a statement on the matter, telling MCV "There are no lay-offs as such, we always have projects growing and morphing. At any given time there are new people coming in and others leaving. EA is growing and hiring and building teams to support the growing demand for digital games and services.

    This was also attached to that link but it seems the OP decided to leave it off...

     

    There are always two sides to every story. I personally don't care since I have not played the Star Wars game and really have no interest, but this one sided "reporting" is BS.

    That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!

  • BloodyVikingBloodyViking Member UncommonPosts: 132

    Originally posted by Slampig

    Originally posted by Bardus

    If you go to http://startupgrind.com/ the is claiming confirmed.

    "Exclusive: I’ve confirmed from multiple sources within Electronic Arts that the company is planning to layoff 500-1,000 people as soon as this week. As of March 31 public numbers, that represents between 5%-11% of total company employees. The layoffs were originally set for last Monday (4/9), but they were pushed back and we’ve confirmed they’re coming very soon.

    After a brief resurgence, EA has had a rough year with Star Wars not matching lofty internal expectations, an expensive Popcap acquisition, a CFO departure, and being recently named the worst company in America.

     

    While it looked like a possible banner year, over stretching on several fronts led to a disappointing fiscal year. Estimates put Battlefield 3 sales around 13MM units, the company ‘chased’ the launch dumping an estimated $30MM into incremental marketing after the game launched according to one source within EA. The same thing was done for Star Wars to extend its run and try to improve sales. Star Wars sell through is estimated to now be around 3MM units, but the subscriptions which are needed for an MMO to payoff are already declining.

    It’s also another big blow to EA CEO John Riccitiello who this month marked his fifth year since returning to EA. I was working at EA and sat in the all-hands meeting to mark his triumphant return in 2007. While the quality of EA games has most definitely improved, the costs to produce these games and Riccitiello’s acquisition warpath have only hurt the bleeding.

    Not to mention a stock price that has moved from $61 to where it sits now at $16, it’s safe to say that Riccitiello’s time is once again running out. On top of all this, Zynga has gutted EA’s management listing 5 of the top 11 executives as former EA senior managers including the COO, CMO, CCO (Creative), CPO (People), and the EVP of Corp Dev. Glassdoor.com puts his internal CEO rating at 53%, no where some Silicon Valley companies like Google (92%) or Yelp (89%) while similar to other CEOs in his category."

     

     

    UPDATE - EA has issued a statement on the matter, telling MCV "There are no lay-offs as such, we always have projects growing and morphing. At any given time there are new people coming in and others leaving. EA is growing and hiring and building teams to support the growing demand for digital games and services.

    This was also attached to that link but it seems the OP decided to leave it off...

     

    There are always two sides to every story. I personally don't care since I have not played the Star Wars game and really have no interest, but this one sided "reporting" is BS.



    And if you bothered to read the replies in the thread this point you bring up has already been talked about and laughed at. If you knew a teeny-weeny bit about corporate lingo and damage control you would see right through the smoke and mirrors. This is in fact a 100% confirmation on the "rumor".

    I really laugh at all the gullible people still thinking SW:TOR is doing well or that EA has already recouped their investment. Some of us see whats going on, but a lot of the Biodrones still buy into the smokescreens. And in a little time me and the other "sceptics" will be proven right. EA is going to crash and burn because they will need new inflow of capital and when the market again turns sour on corporate bonds there will hell to pay. Bad reputation and bad financials is not a good basis to ask the market for more money.

    2012 RIP EA/BW

  • DistasteDistaste Member UncommonPosts: 665

    Originally posted by wyldmagik

    wow anyone aware how many staff were working on this title due to the size of the money involved :D

    And of course with you all being such avid mmorpg forum dwellers the news should not be of any shock to you because you all know right that after a major release the teams of that size in such a large project are cut right back and moved onto other things?

     

    They had around 800 people worldwide working on SWTOR.

    Also that whole idea that after a MMORPG launches the staff gets downsized is, BS. MMORPGS still need content designed, stories written, Sounds added, models made, textures added, concept art of whats to come, etc. Mark Jacobs used that line when Mythic got downsized the first time, it was BS then too. It's corporate double speak for "We didn't do so well so now we are losing staff to match our smaller budget".

    The layoffs wouldn't surprise me though. Just the other day I was posting that layoffs would be expected soon if the game wasn't doing that well. Now lets see if the rumor is actually true or not come saturday.

  • TeknoBugTeknoBug Member UncommonPosts: 2,156

    EA is a big company, they have lots of games and people say they're doing fine- SOE is also a big company, however look at where THEY stand now. Even EA games for the XBox 360 are going downhill, the Madden NFL and NHL series are terrible since 09-10, I stopped playing Battlefield 3 (I'm a long time BF vet since BF1942 demo) because it's too much like Call of Duty and their last patch was just plain dumb (suppression fire buff).

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  • BunksBunks Member Posts: 960

    Ritticelllo's days are numbered. They are getting hit from every angle. Apparently some people are hedging their bets early and short selling as we speak. Layoff are ineveitable, EA needs cash and the only thing they can do is not use what they have for payroll.

  • JeroKaneJeroKane Member EpicPosts: 6,957

    This will pretty much be the end of SW:TOR really.

    As you can bet your rear end that most of those lay offs are going to happen within SW:TOR teams.

    This will have a significant impact on the future of the game, how it's going to be updated from here.

    The first thing that will come to my mind is, that they will have to let go of the 100% voice content, as if they don't, when these major layoffs happen and their budgets being "axed", they can just as well close down the game, as people are gonna leave this game in droves if they have to wait even longer for a update, then the waiting time between 1.1 and 1.2 !

    This might also be the reason why Ranked Warzones was pulled from the 1.2 patch... most likely gonna be either axed totally or put on the backburner.

     

    People who still believe this game has 1,7 mil subs, really need to snap out of their fairytale dream and get back to reality!

    If they currently have 500k to 600k subscribers left, then it's a lot!  The current activity on the servers pretty much reflects that!

     

    It's a shame, as I still had a sub and had hoped the game would shape up over time, but it seems SW:TOR is just gonna end up on the pile of EA failures.

    People should also not be suprised, when subs go down even further (release of GW2 and TSW), that EA might go as far so to just shut down the game and cut their losses.

    They have done it before, they will do it again!


  • Originally posted by joocheese

    I consider myself a EA Games hater so my opinion regarding their layoffs would be entirely biased. I hate EA Games for what they did to the beloved Sim City franchise.

    It doesn't amaze when I see a statement like this.  What amazes is how many different beloved franchises are mentioned by different people. 

  • DragonantisDragonantis Member UncommonPosts: 974

    Is this is true I feel sorry for the employees that will lose their jobs. I guess the companies reputation has finally caught up with them.

  • GrayGhost79GrayGhost79 Member UncommonPosts: 4,775

    Originally posted by gestalt11

    Originally posted by joocheese

    I consider myself a EA Games hater so my opinion regarding their layoffs would be entirely biased. I hate EA Games for what they did to the beloved Sim City franchise.

    It doesn't amaze when I see a statement like this.  What amazes is how many different beloved franchises are mentioned by different people. 

    We could always start an EA IP Cemetary lol.

    Then you'd have to have a seperate section call infirmary where you list IP's they've ruined but haven't killed just yet oO!

    The lists would be so long though, who would have the time to take on such an enormous task.

  • DistopiaDistopia Member EpicPosts: 21,183

    Originally posted by Unlight

    Originally posted by Distopia


    Originally posted by sk8chalif

    Haha, we all saw this coming,  lucky i don't work for them anymore,

    This type of response will always boggle me, it seems somewhat sadistic IMO. To be clear I understand disliking corporations, but getting your jollies off of others loss of employment is just not right.  Most of those people are just doing what they're told to do like any other employee. You can bet most of those truly responsible will still be coming to work the next day, making as much as 10-20 of those others combined.

    I doubt anyone is cheering that people are losing their jobs.  The delight is in knowing that EA is bleeding.  Yes, there is a difference and yes, you *do* know that.

    Yes I know that but I also know there are many sadistic people out there, you should too. If that's not what the guy was saying he had the option to reply and say different.

    For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson


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