Electronic Arts to Lay Off 5 Percent of Workforce, Reduce Office Space

Electronic Artshas tapped former PlayStation executive Connie Booth as its new Group General Manager within its Action RPG division. EA is currently in the process of restructuring following a tumultuous first quarter, which included laying off 5% of its employees and the cancelation of multiple titles that were in development.

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A Sims 4 player online has shown off their incredible castle build from the game, complete with glamorous interior design. The creation goes to show that despite The Sims 4 turning 10 this year, it's still possible to create some beautiful builds in the game.

Respawn Entertainment—the studio behind games like Titanfall 2, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and Apex Legends—has been hit by layoffs as part of larger cuts taking place throughout EA. As spotted by VGC, various current and now-former members of the Respawn team, including Apex Legends level designer Aaron Stump, took to social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to talk about the layoffs.

EA has reportedly laid off some employees from the Apex Legends community team working at Respawn Entertainment. This move related to the Apex Legends team comes in the wake of a layoff announcement made by the California-based publisher last month.

Apex Legends developer Respawn is the latest studio to be affected by EA layoffs.

Just a day after Sony confirmed it's laying off 900 PlayStation employees across its first-party studios, publisher EA has announced it's doing the same. In the region of 670 workers — or around five per cent of the company's workforce — will lose their jobs as the EA Sports FC, Battlefield distributor moves «away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry».

One highly dedicated The Sims 4 player has recently gone through the effort of building a large apartment complex for mermaids. The images of their impressive feat of engineering later made the rounds on social media, eliciting praise from The Sims 4 fandom even though the building couldn't serve its planned purpose in the end.

Dragon Age: Dreadwolf may have suffered another internal delay but is still on course for release in 2024, according to a new report from a well-known industry insider. BioWare previously promised that the long-awaited full reveal of Dragon Age: Dreadwolf would be coming in summer 2024, but without committing to a specific release window.

EA is the latest game company to announce layoffs, with 5% of its workforce to be made redundant. From the most recent headcount EA provided – 13,400 in March 2023 – that would amount to around 670 people.

With the cancellation of Respawn Entertainment’s Star Wars first-person shooter, reportedly based on The Mandalorian, more details about the project have emerged courtesy of Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson. It was noted to be “fantastic” from developer and playtest feedback, but Electronic Arts felt it was “too much of a financial risk.”

The recent layoffs at Electronic Arts may have put the future of some upcoming projects in question, but fans can rest assured that Mass Effect 5 is still being worked on at BioWare. There has been a growing number of layoffs in the gaming industry over the past year or so, with Mass Effect 5 developer BioWare cutting part of the Star Wars: The Old Republic team back in June. This hasn’t slowed down in 2024, with a reported total of over 8,000 job losses in just the past couple of months alone.