According to recent reports, Electronic Arts (EA) fired over 200 Quality Assurance(QA) Staff at the Baton Rogue Studio, LA office. The employees were called to a surprise Zoom Meeting where they were informed about the company’s decision. The fired employees were mostly working on Apex Legends, the publisher’s hit Battle Royale game produced by Respawn Entertainment.
A few employees who were part of the meeting, came to Twitter to inform the public about this spontaneous decision. A user named Ben (@TopMarx420) tweeted about the matter, according to information provided by him none of the managers knew about this decision.
The Zoom call was held by the contracting Agency Mangit Global. Employees were sent a mail to join the “Mandatory Meeting” with the title “SITE CLOSED – Please join Zoom Meeting at 8 am CST”. There was no notice sent to employees previously, making it an unannounced decision
The Baton Rouge office of EA has been a QA hub for a wide variety of games for many years, though in recent times they’ve focused mostly on Apex Legends. There will be a 60-day severance compensation for the affected workers, though some sources claim it won’t be enough to pay off the employees’ remaining contracts.
No Official Reason for Firing from EA
An email from Magnit Global, an EA client, suggests that the layoffs were the “outcome of the decision to terminate manual testing operations at EABR“, while it is unclear why the Apex Legends staff were dismissed.
A second Twitter user reported that the layoffs occurred after Baton Rogue had finished training replacement employees. The replacements are allegedly testers from the United Kingdom and Romania, and it was most likely a cost-cutting measure.
Despite the layoffs, EA has still been looking for people to fill in for Playtesting roles in the company. This is quite confusing at the very least, maybe cost-cutting is the reason behind EA hiring fresh employees. Kotaku asked an EA official on the matter and the response was:
As part of our ongoing global strategy, we are expanding the distribution of our Apex Legends testing team and ending testing execution that’s been concentrated in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, impacting services provided by our third-party provider.
Our global team, inclusive of remote playtesters across the U.S., enables us to increase the hours per week we’re able to test and optimize the game and reflects a commitment to understand and better serve our growing community around the world.
EA
2023 The Year of Layoffs
Respawn Entertainment recently announced that it is discontinuing the Apex Legends Mobile franchise, which was done as the content pipeline for the mobile game had fallen short. In other news, Twitter also laid off nearly two-thirds of its workforce after Musk’s takeover. Meta has also fired a lot of employees after planning to reduce its expenses this year.
EA has not commented on the matter officially. The story is still developing, and we will make sure to inform you of any updates.
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