EA Fires 5% of Staff and Cancels Respawn Entertainment's Star Wars Shooter
Electronic Arts (EA) continues to restructure its business. The company announced that it will reduce another 5% of its employees, which is about 670 people.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
The main thing from EA's statements:
- The restructuring will allow EA to achieve sustainable growth and increase revenue;
- EA has decided to move away from developing games under licenses, which, in its opinion, "will not be successful in a changing gaming industry." She will focus on her own IP, sports games and projects with a large online community;
- EA has canceled an unannounced shooter in the "Star Wars" universe from Respawn Entertainment, which was at an early stage of development. As the media suggest, it was a game based on the TV series "Mandalorian";
- The company has closed EA Sports MLB Tap Sports, F1 Mobile Racing, The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth and a number of other mobile games;
- in the GamesIndustry comment.biz company announced that the development of games based on "Black Panther" and "Iron Man" from Marvel will continue. The third part of Star Wars: Jedi is also in the works;
- EA is closing Ridgeline Games. The studio has been working on new story content for Battlefield — now Criterion Games will do it. Some of the Ridgeline Games staff will move to the Ripple Effect studio, which is also engaged in Battlefield;
- As part of the restructuring, EA will also reduce office space;
- EA plans to spend $125-165 million on a new stage of restructuring. It is expected that it will be completed before December 31, 2024.
EA began a large-scale business restructuring last year. In March 2023, she announced her decision to cut 6% of the staff, or about 775 people. Soon, she also announced that she would split all the company's internal studios between two divisions: EA Entertainment and EA SPORTS.
