News + Trends
EA lays off employees and wants to focus on its own brands
by Debora Pape
Up to 400 EA employees have to go and a "Titanfall" game is cancelled
30/4/2025
Translation: machine translated
EA has not yet recovered from two flops in the autumn and is laying off hundreds of employees again. Studio Respawn is also cancelling the development of two new games.
The video games company Electronic Arts (EA) is still navigating uncertain waters. After several waves of redundancies in recent years, another 300 to 400 employees are now having to leave their jobs, as «Bloomberg»reports.
The newspaper quotes a spokesperson for the group as justifying the move. It reads like most other statements on mass redundancies in the gaming industry: with a view to the long-term strategic growth targets, it has become necessary to organise the teams more efficiently and distribute resources better.
Respawn Entertainment hit hard
At EA's own studio Respawn Entertainment alone, around 100 employees are affected by the redundancies. The studio is responsible for «Apex Legends» and the «Star Wars: Jedi» series. Just last year, Respawn Entertainment discontinued the development of an unspecified «Star Wars» game.
A statement from the company on X gives no details on the number of people made redundant, but only reports on «team adjustments». However, it is clear that these are redundancies: the studio is grateful to the employees affected and is supporting them in the transition. Some could therefore possibly be deployed elsewhere at EA.
In addition, the development of two new game projects has been cancelled. Both were in an early development phase. According to the «Bloomberg» report, one of them was an extraction shooter in the «Titanfall» universe. Nothing more is known about the second game and development was cancelled «earlier in the year».
Game flops in autumn cost EA billions
The background to the current redundancies is a difficult situation for the company. The FIFA series, which is now called FC, is one of EA's most important cash cows. However, FC 25, which was released in September 2024, failed to meet financial expectations. The game series also usually generates millions in profits for the Group through in-game transactions. BioWare's role-playing game «Dragon Age: The Veilguard» also failed to generate as many sales as expected. It was released in October 2024.
As a result of these flops, the company revised its forecast revenue for the 2025 financial year downwards in January - which was immediately reflected on the stock market. The share price sank by 16 per cent and has still not fully recovered.
Header image: Shutterstock/JHVEPhoto
Feels just as comfortable in front of a gaming PC as she does in a hammock in the garden. Likes the Roman Empire, container ships and science fiction books. Focuses mostly on unearthing news stories about IT and smart products.
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