Electronic Arts frags hundreds of workers 'to grow fandom' It's been a bad week to work in the video game industry. First Sony closed its London studio and cut staff, and now Electronic Arts is letting workers go. EA CEO Andrew Wilson announced the layoffs in a letter to employees yesterday, telling them the publisher would be cutting around five percent of staff. Based on its 2023 …
The problem with working for any company is that the drones have no effective control over who runs the company, nor over whatever actions those executives will take.
But, while good companies easily become bad companies (especially when they're sold to new owners who have little-to-no understanding of that business), it seems rare that bad companies become good ones.
> while good companies easily become bad companies
That's ironically appropriate, as EA- along with Activision- must be *the* uber-example of companies that went from good to bad- respected in their early years (i.e. during the 1980s)- both for their high-quality products and respectful attitude towards developers (*)- yet which by the early 2000s had both turned into the complete antithesis of what they once were, emblematic of everything wrong with modern, industrial-scale, coporate, franchise-driven, employee-abusive video game development.
(*) Electronic Arts and Activision both frequently credited the developer on the front of many early games. Activision in particular was founded in response to Atari's attitude that it's (uncredited) developers were little more important than "towel designers" that didn't deserve a bigger share of the profits they'd been instrumental in helping. Which makes it ironic that later on they, along with EA, ended up being the epitome of that same attitude, but on steroids. (Of course, Activision was gutted of almost all its employees and effectively restarted when Bobby Kotick took over in the early 90s, so while- AFAIK- it's still legally the same business, you could argue that it isn't in any meaningful sense).
Electronic Arts has noticed a rapid shift among video game players, who now apparently prioritize large open-world games, online communities, and live services.
That's exactly the kind of crap they've been making for the last decade, except of course for FIFA which they lost.
Thing is, are they? I haven't heard anyone praise large open-world games, quite the opposite with all the gripes of tact on grind, online communities are toxic af because people and I feel Suicide Squad did a great number on underscoring all the faults with a live service.
If I were a shareholder I'd be pushing for a vote of no confidence in the board as he's clearly detached from reality..
How do these motherfuckers keep a straight face when coming out with this bollocks?
We're going to make better games by getting rid of people. That only makes sense if you've been hiring people to fuck stuff up.
You're streamlining your company operations because it's the only way you fucktards know to make the share price go up.
Making better games so the price goes up is much trickier, the public might not like what you make even after you've spent millions on it.
But the market ALWAYS loves it when the plebs take a kicking.
> How do these motherfuckers keep a straight face when coming out with this bollocks?
The same way you get to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice; or, alternatively, have your parents buy you good seats.
>Electronic Arts has noticed a rapid shift among video game players, who now apparently prioritize large open-world games, online communities, and live services.
No, that's what the AAA game industry has prioritized because it maximizes arbitrary engagement numbers and revenue. Most people don't want games that are large and directionless (most open world games), encouraging trolls and abuse (most multiplayer only games), have time limited content that players are locked out of if they didn't join on day one (most live service games), and will be completely unplayable when the servers are shut down (see all previous examples). But when that's all you offer because your beancounters tell you that those make the most money, then of course that's what you think everyone is playing.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
