EA Lays Off 350 Employees, Largely in Marketing and Publishing

This year’s brutality continues unhampered, as EA has just announced that they’ve laid off 350 people, mostly from marketing, publishing and other areas not directly related to game development. And with these layoffs, we can officially say that 2019 is the worst year ever for layoffs in the games industry: and we’re not even 1/3rd of the way done with the year.

Here’s what they had to say to Kotaku, when reached for comment:

Today we took some important steps as a company to address our challenges and prepare for the opportunities ahead. As we look across a changing world around us, it’s clear that we must change with it. We’re making deliberate moves to better deliver on our commitments, refine our organization and meet the needs of our players. As part of this, we have made changes to our marketing and publishing organization, our operations teams, and we are ramping down our current presence in Japan and Russia as we focus on different ways to serve our players in those markets. In addition to organizational changes, we are deeply focused on increasing quality in our games and services. Great games will continue to be at the core of everything we do, and we are thinking differently about how to amaze and inspire our players.

Technically, for EA, these layoffs aren’t actually that big, as they employ about 9,000 people worldwide, so 350 marks about 3 percent of their workforce. And apparently, employees had been long anticipating these layoffs, so they’re not exactly a surprise to anyone that they’ve impacted. Finally, EA has confirmed that they are offering career counseling and support to the people who’ve been affected: all facts that soften the blow, but don’t make it any less impactful, or foreboding.

Things are looking grim in the games industry as of late…