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[Kotaku] EA Lays Off 350 People In Marketing, Publishing, Analytics
- Thread starter dex3108
- Start date
Both are true, you have games with terrible marketing, games where it's the only thing drawing sales, but overall, key decisions at the top, in legal and business areas, is drowning EA and puting the blame somewhere else, as always.
Looking at their earnings report. Ubi is not in the same league as EA. So I have no idea.
I dunno, have you gone through finalling a game and *lost* weight? That "gold master gut" is a thing.
They may be financially stable or even growing due to FIFA Ultimate Team and other annualized titles, but their execution on a growing number of major IPs leaves a lot to be desired and is alienating an increasing number of their fans.
No argument on that front from me. But I just don't see them going out of business anytime soon.
Releasing games that people want to buy. They have a ton a variety in their line-up. Battlefield 5 is pretty much the only game they released this gen I've paid full price for. I buy a lot of games and EAs catalog has nothing that interest me.
Caring about their games and employees instead of treating them like money printing machines. Also making good and varied games. Supporting their games for the long term. Releasing free updates and DLC for years.
I agree. I'm not suggesting that they go the full 'pay influencers' route. Rather, they should understand that a much, much larger majority of people discover games completely differently than they did even 3 years ago and market accordingly. They should be their own influencers.
If it were me running marketing at EA, virtually all of the entire team would be full-time streamers. Create content about your games 24/7, speaking directly to your customers and showing games constantly. The new ones, the old ones, all of them.
At OOTP that's what we're building towards. We self-produce 5-6 hours of content per week minimum - live Twitch streams (archived immediately to YouTube) and a weekly podcast plus an incredibly active Discord. My dream is to have every day covered with multiple hours of content. That's how you build a community nowadays.
I remember you from Playerone Podcast, thanks for the insight.
They're not going anywhere. They're just going to follow a path similar to Activision and rely on fewer and fewer games to bring in money. You don't need huge marketing teams or ad campaigns on Polygon when Twitch and YouTube get the job done for you. If you're only operating in a few categories and those customers are easily reached through those platforms, your operation can become leaner. Unfortunately, that is bad news for people whose careers relied on the more traditional method of marketing products.
I'm not sure this is the message they are going to receive when you look at how things have played out between Anthem and Apex Legends. "Aping whatever is popular" is going to be even more of a focus. At some point people need realize these companies are more in the software business than the entertainment business, in terms of what industries you need to compare them to. GaaS has more in common with an operating system than a book or a movie. Product quality and player satisfaction isn't the primary concern. It will at least be interesting to see how traditional games media responds to being cut out of the loop. Hostility towards readership is my guess.
Yup. Heck I don't even think it's a problem unique to the gaming industry either. There are a lot of marketing departments in a lot of billion dollar businesses. that still have no response to their competitors cutting out the middlemen and having direct contact with their customer.
Watch their stock go zooming up. Man, capitalism sometimes sucks.
Hope these folks find good jobs soon.
Depends on your definition of "going down." I think their business model will crack and they will be forced to adapt, but they are a big company and not run by idiots. EA will exist and be AAA large for the long term. But their current path will not continue to see the same exponential growth as the last few years, and I imagine their stock value will have a come to jesus moment when that reality becomes undeniable.
That really sucks. At the very least seems like the employees are getting other positions in the company and the ones leaving are receiving severance. That's good. And of course, the lay off is being made officially, unlike what happened in Activision Blizzard months ago.
Nice Post.
Employees at EA literally have better conditions than Ubisoft have.
Aside from your vision about the games of both, EA even if in a FY where they get less money YoY still is quite above Ubisoft so I don't think they're looking at it. Ubisoft is the 4th force, behind Activision Blizzard, EA and Take Two. In that order.
Nice Post.
Employees at EA literally have better conditions than Ubisoft have.
Aside from your vision about the games of both, EA even if in a FY where they get less money YoY still is quite above Ubisoft so I don't think they're looking at it. Ubisoft is the 4th force, behind Activision Blizzard, EA and Take Two. In that order.
Except that from all available information, EA is one of the best in the business when it comes to employee treatment.
It's 4% of their workforce in mostly bureaucratic positions. they hire in waves and fire in waves, when you have 9,000 employees it's important to trim the fat. Why would you continue to employ hundreds of people in roles that are no longer relevant to the way the industry works?
Letting under 5% go after trimming the fat for a company that size does not make news in any industry other than video games. They're not doing this because they're struggling to make payroll. They are adapting to changes and treating everyone who is being let go fairly with severance / moves on the table.
Letting under 5% go after trimming the fat for a company that size does not make news in any industry other than video games. They're not doing this because they're struggling to make payroll. They are adapting to changes and treating everyone who is being let go fairly with severance / moves on the table.
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Somehow Activision will lay off From Software devs despite sekiro's success. They just will somehow despite it not making any sense
Fuck these companies
Sorry to destroy your narrative, but EA has some of the best working conditions in the industry.
So they got 137000 bucks for each laid off.
Guess most of them would be happy with that salary too.
Are these employees paying for the horrible decisions EA has made from releasing bad, incomplete games, and trying to suck every nickle out of gamers with their insidious micro transaction focus, and how there has been push back to it? I have been done with EA since Battlefront. I will never be on board again unless they do a complete 180 on shit!
They have to say something when there is a wave of layoffs. It can't sound too down and it must have a positive spin. So there you have it,
What "Great Games" ?!
Wilson is certaintly the worst CEO the entire gaming industry have ever seen ! dude destroyed EA completely
Wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that Anthem had a massive marketing blitz while Apex Legends stealth dropped and is more successful. In other words "Why do we need this massive marketing department if our new strategy going forward is buying influencers." Understood Apex is by miles a better game, but still, they have to be seeing how traditional marketing is shifting.
That being said I see a ton of marketing for Apex during the NCAAM tournament.
Not that I agree with everything you've said, but yeah this is somewhat standard. I've been through a few reductions in forces and half the time it was people hired up for a big surge in work or conversely it was just trimming a lot of low performing workers or an under-performing branch for the health of the business. I've been through a 10% RIF while interviewing college grads at literally the same time.
That being said I see a ton of marketing for Apex during the NCAAM tournament.
Not that I agree with everything you've said, but yeah this is somewhat standard. I've been through a few reductions in forces and half the time it was people hired up for a big surge in work or conversely it was just trimming a lot of low performing workers or an under-performing branch for the health of the business. I've been through a 10% RIF while interviewing college grads at literally the same time.
This obviously sucks horribly for those affected, but the sentiments in this thread that
If there are general issues with how EA treats their employees or has handled their severance, then okay, lets talk about that. But the existence of layoffs is not prima facie evidence of that. And neither is Anthem being bad, nor Battlefield whatever having too many microtransactions.
- Apparently no one should ever be laid off
- no one in management is affected
If there are general issues with how EA treats their employees or has handled their severance, then okay, lets talk about that. But the existence of layoffs is not prima facie evidence of that. And neither is Anthem being bad, nor Battlefield whatever having too many microtransactions.
Good. At least a hiring freeze was put into place and severance is being paid out. Heard from some software dev friends that EA is comparatively okay to work for. Not that it means much but there you go. Least this ain't a Telltale 'what severance?' or Activision 'record profits' situation. Still so many on the ground workers suffering. Fucking sucks.
True. But marketing and analytics aren't as big in the scene at GDC from what I hear. It's mostly devs and indie devs and publishers throwing pitches at each other. But I'm not an expert so.
I keep seeing this being said and while it's true the chance of getting a new job is lower, this is a load of crap (no offense). It's still a fantastic place to network with other like minded individuals. I've gone there for over 10 years and have met loads of people from both sides. At the very least, it's better than nothing at all.
None taken. I mean, yeah, what you're saying is completely true. I don't want to act like GDC acts like a huge clique of developer only types (I mean it mostly ain't), just saying that getting a marketing or analytic job is so much lower compared to an indie dev doing a pitch. And those are barely guaranteed anything either, even if the pitch is well done.
Your point about networking is pretty important, I hadn't thought that through. After all, marketing/analytic folks could do work in other areas at other companies or just find other opportunities. Having a support network can mean the difference between getting on unemployment or finding yourself at another desk in a week.
Yeah. And even then, if you are looking for a job at GDC, it's a lot harder than it used to be. The Career Pavilion has really shrunk to almost nothing. Which is sad.
Apex Legends may have been "shadow dropped" without a long tail, but it had an enormous marketing budget that likely required many, many people to pull off.
Welcome to a "people got fired" thread. There's typically a lot of those kind of sentiments. It sucks, but firings happen in different industries (and different economic systems, and non-public companies) all the time, and it usually doesn't mean that:
-Unions would have guaranteed saved the day
-Exec stock packages are good replacements for normal wages
-Every company is structured like Nintendo/Ubisoft/what have you
-The company which fired people is some hellhole to work in
-The only people who ever have to think and get challenged on their jobs are the higher ups
-Boycotting a company will be helpful to prevent further layoffs
I'm more concerned, atm, about the employees receiving COBRA, severance, and relocation, but I haven't heard anything in the story regarding those.
Honestly, I'm looking it over and thinking that maybe it is a procedurally generated EA layoff press release... so maybe nobody actually had to type it?
