EA Games to Layoff

EA is looking to get rid of workers in its Vancouver office, and while they are no big on a lot of the specifics, such as how many people are going to be out of a job, EA did  issue the following statement about the layoffs through the site IndustryGamers :

“EA in Vancouver is transforming its studio to align with EA’s transformation to high-growth digital formats, including online, social gaming and free-to-play. Employees in our BC studio are learning new skills and working on digital games and services, and there are many examples.

Developed at the EA SPORTS studio in Burnaby, the FIFA Soccer franchise represents the cutting edge of AAA gaming integrated with multiplatform extensions and online features.

The Need for Speed World team in Burnaby is leading the digital transformation with 11 million registered players. As the BC studio makes this transformation, a small number of employees are being impacted while most others are being retrained, redeployed and rolling-on to new projects”

Of course, EA is not the only game company to layoff workers in the past couple of month. THQ, “…the mastermind behind games such as: Saints Row: The Third, Warhammer® 40,000: Space Marine®, and Warhammer® 40,000®: Dawn of War II® – Retribution™.

Despite the company’s success in the games market, it is having some serious fiscal issues that may slow down, or even stop the flow of games from the company. THQ is getting ready to let go of about one dozen workers in their offices in Australia. They have also begun the process of closing down its offices in Japan, according to reports filed by the Japanese media.

This is not the first time that the company has let go of staff in order to get rid of staff. The Play THQ division, which designs products for the relatively unpopular uDraw line, let go of 30 people recently.  They also recently close a few other studios in Australia, letting go of about 200 workers in the process.”

Id Games and its parent company, “game maker Ubisoft was able to confirm that some of its staff was being let go. The cuts came from a company that is owned by Bethesda Softworks, known as id Software. The id Software staff is being let go in multiple waves. While some of the staff was let go on Tuesday, other staffing cuts are going to be made in the near future. This means that at the current moment we do not have specific numbers on how many staff members are to be cut in total, for the current moment we do not even have an estimate.

Bethesda Softworks released an official statement about the layoffs in order to quell rumors of a shutdown of id Software. As part of its standard business practice, id regularly evaluates staffing to ensure it has a workforce that meets the needs of the studio. As part of that process, some id employees were recently let go.”

So maybe, game industry workers will need to keep their resumes sharpened and always be on the lookout for a new job.