
Layoffs at EA Today - ilamont
http://kotaku.com/layoffs-at-ea-today-481149396?utm_campaign=Socialflow_Kotaku_Twitter&utm_source=Kotaku_Twitter&utm_medium=Socialflow
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mikestew
Could be a "realignment of priorities", could be lagging sales, who knows?
What I do know is that I've actively started avoiding EA games. I'm not a
hard-core gamer, so I don't get terribly passionate about the actual and
alleged sins of EA. But I think Battlefield 3 is going to be the last EA game
I buy. Without going into a long spiel, it just feels like they're not
satisfied with my $60 and make it too obvious in their grab for more. They're
not the only ones, but they're the first ones I noticed and they continue to
be the most blatant.

Add to that the problems that so many of the games have upon release. I know
Battlefield 3 had problems, and then there's the well-publicized Sims.
Everyone I know that plays Madden complains every year when a new one comes
out (yes, I do question why they continue to buy it). Perhaps I'm not the only
one considering how badly I want to play a game when I stand a good chance of
being frustrated with it at the start. Maybe I'll go outside instead. :-)

~~~
endgame
I've pretty much switched to board games. They don't have activation servers,
they don't need net connections and I get to see my friends IRL. I only have
an underpowered GNU/Linux netbook at the moment so computer gaming's not
really an option, anyway.

~~~
robinh
Not that there's anything wrong with board games - I agree with all the points
you mentioned - but have you ever tried some of the text-based games on your
netbook? There are a lot of them out there, most of them are free, and some
are pretty awesome.

~~~
cjh_
There are even some awesome 2d games like 'Battle for Wesnoth' (open source)
that will happily run on most netbooks.

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brokenparser
TFA: _those that are leaving EA will be missed by their colleagues and
friends_

Colleagues, sure, but friends? Really? Are they going to kill ~900 ex-
employees?

~~~
rm999
That actually made me laugh out loud, but I assume they meant their colleagues
who are also their friends. Something like the logician's definition of 'and',
I suppose.

~~~
groovy2shoes
In which case, I suppose they won't be missing their colleagues who aren't
also their friends. Sounds about right.

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ChrisNorstrom
Wild theory:

They're firing all the people that need to be fired before the new CEO comes
in. Otherwise, if the new guy has to fire a bunch of people as soon as he's in
it will taint his initial relation and standing with the company. Plus, no one
wants to do the dirty work of the last CEO. How would you feel going into a
CEO position knowing you're the one who's going to be responsible for breaking
up teams and sending 900 employees home without jobs?

~~~
biot
If your theory is true, it's likely that the new CEO requested that the
layoffs happen on the current CEO's watch as a condition to accepting the
position.

~~~
ttrreeww
So the new CEO caused the layoffs.

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ChikkaChiChi
"EA's most high-profile projects on the horizon are this fall's DICE-developed
Battlefield 4 and the BioWare-developed Dragon Age III."

EA continues to go to the well of existing properties all the while dangling a
slightly new feature in one hand while choking us with DLC/IAP in the other.
Their CDN is a joke compared to Steam and they earned their rating in pop
culture with their routine disdain for their customer base.

Gaming is still in its infancy as an art form. The faster the EA/Activision
oligopoly is broken up, the more power we as consumers will have in the
future.

~~~
munificent
> EA continues to go to the well of existing properties

That's because consumers continue to prefer the waters drawn from that well.
If people want new IP, they need to show that with their money.

~~~
ryguytilidie
You mean like making Minecraft insanely popular? Or Kerbal Space Program the
game of the year in many magazines? Or DayZ being the game of the year in most
other magazines? Theres only so much we can blame the consumer for companies
producing shit.

~~~
arrrg
You can't make AAA games with the money those games are making.

~~~
J_Darnley
Really? How many people have bought Minecraft? More than 10 million (on PC
alone) [1]. Assume everyone paid the beta price of €14.95 [2] and we get €150
million! That sounds like triple-A money to me.

Okay, that could be wildly inaccurate if everyone buys it cheap through deals
like Steam. 75% off and similar.

Wikipedia says the Notch estimated €25M in purchases a few months after the
beta [3]. By the end of the beta that was 4 million purchases which has now
risen to 10 million. As far as I can tell, that doesn't include any figures
from Apple, Google, or Microsoft.

[1] <https://minecraft.net/> [2]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20110114022633/http://www.minecra...](http://web.archive.org/web/20110114022633/http://www.minecraft.net/prepurchase.jsp)
[3] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft#Commercial>

~~~
arrrg
Minecraft is a fluke. It cannot be imitated.

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niggler
Is this due to some projects nearing completion (like what we saw with
Activision when they finished Diablo III) or are there deeper problems afoot?

~~~
lmkg
Well their CEO resigned last month. I don't follow the business side of their
company, but Bayes' Theorem is leaning towards "deeper problems" right now.

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purplelobster
A bit off topic perhaps, but where I work at "big corp" there are so many
people who have worked at the company for 15-20-30 years, it's really
incredible. They've built their whole lives around big corp, they've bought a
house nearby, live somewhere where there aren't many alternative jobs. They've
worked on the same thing for at least a decade, and they only ever "changed
jobs" within the company itself.

I have a very bad feeling that these people will be tasting the result of the
faster global world very soon. People in my generation will never be relaxed
and content with their job (for better or worse), because we know it might not
exist in a year or two.

~~~
msoad
I see all those people here in Silicon Valley too. I know a guy who worked for
IBM optical storage systems (ones with robotic hand/mounter). He was a
director in his team. All of sudden their team got shot down and he got laid
off. Now he works as a developer in Cisco. All he knows is C and Assembly. He
don't even know what Git is. It's amazing how people in past had one job and
relied on it so much...

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Macsenour
And yet they refuse to do an updated M.U.L.E. game. Go figure.

~~~
HCIdivision17
As I understand it, that's because the franchise is already being developed
elsewhere: <http://mulereturns.com/>

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fixxer
Uhoh, looks like that Malaysian restaurant down the road is going to get even
fewer customers... shame (I love those Singapore prawns!)

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TwoBit
You mean the one next to ToGo's?

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fixxer
That's the one.

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ttrreeww
So, close to a thousand people laid off?

