Electronic Arts is another company that paid the price for the crisis of the video game industry. This is attributed to the thoughtless recruitment of people in the time of covid. EA has announced a major restructuring, plans to lay off approximately 5% of employees.
A year ago, EA employed 13,400 people worldwide. The redundancies will thus affect approx 670 from them. CEO Andrew Wilson wants to streamline the company's operations so they can bring more immersive and sophisticated experiences to players.
As part of the investigation, some games will be canceled and EA will give up some licenses that it believes will not be successful in the changing market. They want to focus on creativity, accelerate innovation and double down on the development of their own brands, sports and massive online communities. These should be the things that have the best chance of engaging players today and tomorrow.
It's interesting the cancellation of Respawn's first-person Star Wars event. It was speculated to be a Mandalorian bounty hunter shooter set during or shortly before the original film trilogy. So he wouldn't be the main character of the Mandalorian live series. Development was in the early stages and was led by Peter Hirschmann, who previously worked at LucasArts, worked on the original Battlefront and The Force Unleashed games, and co-wrote Medal of Honor.
At Respawn, they will fully focus on the Star Wars Jedi series and new experiences in Apex Legends. It looks like most of the team that worked on the Star Wars FPS will be moved on to other projects. Despite these changes, EA wants to continue working with Disney, projects remain in development Black Panther and Iron Man. Let's remind that in September/September last year Stig Asmussen announced his departure from Respawn, he led the development of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
What does not remain, on the other hand, is the studio Ridgeline Games, founded in 2022. It was recently abandoned by co-founder Marcus Lehto. The creator of Halo and other industry veterans were in charge of the story campaign for the future Battlefield. But EA is closing the studio and will now oversee the single player Battlefield Criterion Games. Some Ridgeline Games employees will enrich the team Ripple Effect (formerly DICE Los Angeles) where multiplayer experiences for the new Battlefield are being worked on. So they will have to move from Seattle to California.