The day of February 28, 2024 ends in the worst way possible, that is, with the announcement of yet another wave of layoffs in the videogame industry. This time the person responsible is Electronic Arts, which has expressed its intention to fire 5% of its global staff, for a total that should be around 670 employees.
The layoffs are part of a broader restructuring plan that also includes the downsizing of some offices, the closure of servers for low-profit mobile games such as MLB Tap Sports and F1 Mobile Racing, and the interruption of licensed video game development with few opportunities for success in the current gaming scenario.
In recent years, Electronic Arts has signed important agreements with Disney for the development of video games based on franchises such as Star Wars and Marvel. According to what we learned from GamesIndustry.biz, one licensed game would have already been canceled as part of this plan. His identity was not disclosed, so we don't know which game met this unfortunate fate, but an EA representative assured that Motive Studio's Iron Man and Cliffhanger Games' Black Panther they are still regularly in development.
Both video games, remember, were announced as Narrative-focused single player experiences, thus distancing itself from subdued live service superhero projects such as Marvel's Avengers and the recent Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. As for Iron Man, the adoption of Unreal Engine 5 has also been made official. Neither of the two currently has a launch window,
Returning to the layoffs, we point out that those directly involved will receive the unfortunate communication by the beginning of the next fiscal quarter, which appears to be set for 1 April 2024. According to Kotaku's accounts, with the 670 people about to be sent to home from Electronic Arts rise to at least 8,177 gaming industry workers fired in the first two months of 2024.