EA to Cut Between 500 and 1000 Jobs

When it comes to cutting jobs one would think that there would be very few  jobs left to cut outside of the bare bones at most companies. After all when all you hear about are job cuts day in and day out, often to vital services to our society, you would not think that there were many jobs left that could be cut from the arts or entertainment. Well it looks like we all were wrong.

This time it is Electronic Arts, better known as EA that are getting ready to cut back on jobs. For those of you who are not gamers here is a look at how the company describes itself: “Electronic Arts Inc. is a leading global interactive entertainment software company. EA develops, publishes, and distributes interactive software worldwide for video game systems, personal computers, wireless devices and the Internet.”

According to sources close to the company EA is going to be getting rid of a serious amount of staff. For now the layoffs are all rumors, as the company has not made any official announcement about the cuts to the press at the current moment. According to the information circulating there will be between 500 and 1,000 jobs cut. This would mean a reduction of between five and eleven percent of the companies overall staffing.

All of these cuts despite the fact that EA posted some nice profits in the last year. The company described its success in the following terms: “In fiscal 2011, EA posted GAAP net revenue of $3.6 billion. EA is recognized for critically acclaimed, high-quality blockbuster franchises such as The Sims™, Madden NFL Football, FIFA Soccer, Need for Speed™, Battlefield™, Star Wars™: The Old Republic™  and Mass Effect™ .”

One theory for the cuts is the expense of the recent purchase of PopCap, which EA bought in July of 2011. The cost was about $750 million, and the company posted losses after that aquisition. The company has not seen any profit from the purchase yet.

While there is no word on where the layoffs will come from at the current moment, due to the lack of official word at the current moment EA does have a limited number of offices. Here is a look at all of the potential locations in which job cuts could come:

United States:
Visceral Games (Redwood City, California)
EA Salt Lake (Salt Lake City, Utah)
EALA (Los Angeles, California)
Maxis (Emeryville, California)
Mythic (Fairfax, Virginia)
The Sims (Redwood City, California)
Tiburon (Orlando, Florida)

Canada:
Bioware (Edmonton)
EA Montréal (Montréal)
EAC (Burnaby)
Europe:
Bright Light (Guildford, U.K.)
Criterion (Guildford, U.K.)
Digital Illusions (Stockholm, Sweden)
Phenomic (Frankfurt, Germany)
Bucharest, Romania
Galway, Ireland

Asia:
Hyderabad, India
Shanghai, China
Seoul, Korea
Singapore
Pandemic (Brisbane, Australia)
Melbourne, Australia

For now all the workers who might be on the layoff list can do is wait and see what exactly who will get the axe and who will be left to pick up the pieces and keep their jobs.