EA: It's In The Game (The Unemployment Line, Specifically)

Could be a good time to start a development house, though. Plenty of talent will be available. And desperate.

If this had happened a couple of weeks ago I’d certainly be sitting here going “Yeah, they’re nuts”. We’re in a major market correction. That they’ve held out on a major round of layoffs this long is impressive. I think those people were dead on their feet, they just didn’t know it (or did and couldn’t do anything about it).

Mobile and Social game development is hot. I don’t think EA had a Social platform prior to next week. Consider that Amazon and Paypal are in a huge turf war over who will monetize it. So that $300M? Chump change for EA and they might make it all back.

That having been said, I don’t like EA any more than I did before. Sadly, resistance is still futile.

There’s a certain sick irony in the very real possibility that there’s no one left to put out the obligatory “we didn’t need those guys anyway” press release.

The reason i support indy developers. Big company’s such as EA are starting to abandon the pc platform and make direct ports to pc with higher costs to the consumers. I hope fellow gamers wake up and start talking to the game developers with our money or lack of money i should say. The gamers are getting treated bad the employs worse. I can only hope these people can find more work. Maybe some of these people will start there own company and treat there pc gamers well. If you treat your costumers well they will give you money, just look at unknown worlds. I personally have gave them over 100$ between donations and preordering natural selection 2. Why? because I believe Charlie wont bend us pc gamers over for a quick buck.

To be fair, that Facebook game developer apparently has revenue of $75 million per year.

Interestingly, EA is claiming that the product-level disruption of/behind the layoffs is “the bottom third” and easily dozens of titles: http://kotaku.com/5400822/ea-cuts-loose-bottom-third-of-its-game-lineup

Anyway Lum, I too know the ugly face of this current economy for those looking for jobs. I made the “mistake” of graduating with my Master’s degree in December 2008. I’ve had a manic time trying to guess the opportunity cost of my graduate schooling in having jobs available to me… This EA layoff is one more notch in a very cynical belt for me.

I don’t believe there’s any logic to EA’s actions beyond shoring up their stock price this quarter. With some companies I’d attribute this to the economy, but there’s no evidence EA ever operated on any other principle even in better times.

I was laid off from EA at the start of May. My old boss has been doing his best to find openings for those of us who got axed, and a couple people have gotten their jobs back. As of today, he’s being laid off. And for those upset about the timing of the Playfish announcement, that’s how big-time corporate America works. The layoffs were bad news–stock price goes down. So you announce your next merger with a SOCIAL GAME DEVELOPER (which is awfully exciting especially if you don’t understand what this means) and you can balance out the bad news.

Remember, kids, it wasn’t a studio merger (even when they’re firing 40% of the “other” studio)!

Anyone interested in starting a new game studio, feel free to get in touch. Perhaps it’s time to exploit some of those investor contacts I have and do something good for a change.

It’s EA. What did people actually expect to happen?

I know their dealings back from 1995 when they bought about every major game distributor in Germany and started to enforce unified prices on their games (starting with Wing Commander IV).

We all know the debacles with Origin, Bullfrog, etc. and those studios actually made the killer games back then, not like Mythic with one lucky game which they eventually managed to kill by themselves too.

Warhammer was a failure in almost every aspect, the whole EA-Mythic-GOA-deal was. PC games market is drying up, a lot of veteran studios like Epic and id moved their focus to consoles, so either Scott’s MMOG prototypes will come from 3-men-teams and maybe some of them will start successfully with a nice niche game like EVE did or the majority of the planet will spend the time playing console games and/or ask for the next 10-milllion-subscriber-MMOG.

Lower your living expenses, start with your own vegetable garden and try to contribute to some indie project or start your own – maybe the only way to keep your vision, dignity and sanity intact.

Yes, yes, EA is full of people trying to make a living like everyone else…

… but all of gamerkind may never truly forgive.

300 million for a facebook game developer???? You just click buttons, its a damned browser interface..there’s no “game”

Ugh and it sucks for the people at Mythic, but who didn’t see this coming? Its what EA does a lot of the time, especially when they purchase companies that work in areas EA never dealt with before the purchase.

Ok so at this point how much of Mythic that started WAR is still there? Whats the point of buying a company..and then firing all the people you got with the purchase?

This is why capitalism sucks.

T.

If capitalism would be so successful there would be no need to declare some companies system relevant and bail them out with tax payer’s money.

I find hiring tons of people and firing them just stupid, it only shows that someone could not think a bit ahead.

@EpicSquirt: bailing out big companies is not capitalism. In a true capitalism environment there is no “too big to fail”.

Taking money from successful business and use them to bail out failed business is socialism. The big banks/brokerage firms that spent money unwisely should not be bailed out, they should fail and replaced by efficient ones.

That’s a huge amount of jobs to axe. Real shame and I feel for everyone who’s been made redundant.

“Too bad for Pandemic– felt like they were always on the cusp.”

I should clarify I’m just responding to the rumors. Sounds like they might be fine after all? I certainly hope so.

How’s that Hopenchange working out for you now?

Good thing The One passed that trillion dollar stimulus with a promise to keep unemployment under 8%.

Oh wait, unemployment is approaching 11% you say?

Well, look over here!!!! Michelle has a vegetable garden!!

Warhammer ‘had potential’. But, as a Beta Tester (Yeah, I do test and provide feedback) it was obvious to me the game was lacking.
My biggest concern was the lack of any kind of balancing for RvR.
If you want to develop an RvR game this should be the first thing your designers think about. You should not wait to the 11th hour to consider it and just hope it will all work itself out (which is what Mark Jacobs said)
I said this on MMORPG.com pre-release – so I am not being a 20/20 hindsight smartarse here.

As for Facebook apps and PC games.
What is an MMO? Look at Farmtown, Farmville and many of the others… what do you see?
I see one element of an MMO stripped down and made accessible to many.
Farmtown is crafting. I don’t think it is an MMO but it is part of an MMO.
In fact – Farmtown plays more like an MMO than a couple of the MMOs I have played.
Personally, I don’t find it very stimulating but I do see what it offers. To dismiss it or the way it is presented is a mistake.
Developers (particularly MMO devs) should be paying attention.
Farmtown (if reports are to be believed) is the WoW killer. More people play it than WoW.
That seems to disprove that the MMO market is saturated too?
And how are people getting on Facebook? With PCs?
So the PCs are out there – and people willing to game on PCs are out there.

‘has potential’?

“The new EA, which looks to publish 30+ titles, down from 60+ last year, is an EA that would have never funded development of The Sims. Consider that.”

There’s no way to know that. This is like arguing that the 2009 Yankees wouldn’t have won the 1999 World Series, not with their current mentality.

Warthammer: it had good intentions, some really good ideas, but the end game was just not fun. You had your choice of fighting a zerg or fighting NPCs, most of the time people just went for NPCs. Because the Tier 4 zones were spread out enough, you avoid the enemy with ease. The fort and city fights were annoying (at the time I played, quit a few months ago before they removed the fort fights) at best. Don’t expect War to last much longer.

DAOC will die the second it can’t pay for its upkeep. Since the server merger, the population is good with returning people, but there will be a decrease soon when the people that returned remember why they quit playing to begin with or switch to the new fotm game. I know it is all a business decision and nothing personal but it is kind of sad to see things go down this way.

I recall some prominent guy who isn’t Scott Jennings claiming that the down turn in the economy wouldn’t effect gaming companies very much.

I’d just like to point out, that at the time I called him on that non-sense.

Things are going to get worse. Much worse. At my current site we had about 1400 employees. We have laid off 480 people this year.

We can’t maintain our product with this staffing level. I imagine it’s the same all over the country and across all industry.

I’m sure that people out of work are not spending as much on games. Instead of a game a month, maybe they buy a game every three months. Or they find free games to play, play demos, replay older games, etc.

I don’t really think the recession hits MMOs as hard, though. MMOs are cheap to play. I think Warhammer’s problems with retention are due to other issues than the recession.