Publishing giant Electronic Arts—the company behind everything from The Sims to Apex Legends to FIFA and Madden—announced today that approximately 6% of its global workforce, or between 700-800 people, will be laid off as the company drives “greater focus across our portfolio”.
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In a post on EA’s website, CEO Andrew Wilson writes that the publisher has taken a look at its upcoming projects, restructured some teams and even reviewed their “real estate footprint”. In the wake of that, the decision was made to lay off “approximately six percent of our company’s workforce”.
Electronic Arts generated approximately $7 billion in net revenue last year, as reported on January 31, 2023, with gross profits of over $5 billion (an increase of 18% over the year before). In 2022 CEO Wilson, who described this move as “the most difficult part”, made approximately 172 times the median EA employee’s total compensation. Or 636 times what some customer service staff had been paid (before they were laid off, anyway).
This announcement comes just a month after 200 testers working on the company’s Apex Legends series were laid off via Zoom call (though given Wilson’s comments that “these decisions began earlier this quarter”, those may have been part of this overall count).
