EA to layoff 1,000 and shutdown/consolidate 9 studios

[NiX]

Pulled from Gamasutra:

EA says it will lay off a further 4 percent of its workforce as it either consolidates or closes down "at least nine" of its studios. Including the company's recently-announced headcount reduction, this brings the company's planned layoffs to 10 percent of its total -- 1,000 employees.

EA's Vancouver-based Black Box studio is the only one specifically referenced in the company's announcement. Black Box, developers of the Need For Speed franchise, will see its teams and projects moved to EA's nearby Burnaby, British Columbia studio.

The company declined to provide any details on the further planned closures and consolidations. It says that the consolidation and headcount reduction will save it $120 million annually, but will incur restructuring charges of $55-65 million over the next several quarters.

You can catch the rest here. Let's hope Bioware isn't one of those 9 studios being affected in this.

[Merusk]

Of course it is.  It hasn't produced a game in the last 12 months, right? Therefore it's a drain and not a faucet, so it gets cut.

Those houses that have shat out a derivative '0X or 2, 3, 4 title in the last year or so and had it sold will be the ones others are merged in to.

[HaemishM]

Since the Need for Speed franchise has gone to utter shit, I'm not surprised Black Box got consolidated.

[Velorath]

Well, let's take a look at what studios EA actually has:

EALA (formerly Dreamworks Interactive, and fused with part of Westwood):  Command & Conquer, Lord of the Rings, Medal of Honor, Boom Blox.  Also develops mobile titles.

Pandemic (Teams in LA, Brisbane, and Melbourne):  Star Wars Battlefront, Mercenaries, Destroy All Humans, Full Spectrum Warrior.  Currently working on Saboteur.

Tiburon:  Madden, NCAA, Tiger Woods, NASCAR

Redwood Shores:  The Sims, Dead Space, Godfather, Simpsons

Maxis:  Spore

Salt Lake (formerly Headgate Studios): formerly worked on PGA golf games.  Now developing a Nerf title and a Littlest Pet Shop title.

Mythic:  DAOC, Warhammer

Bioware:  Mass Effect, Dragon Age

Bioware Austin:  SW:TOR

EA Montréal:  Army of Two, SSX Blur, Boogie

Black Box:  Need for Speed, Skate

EA Canada:  FIFA Soccer, NBA LIVE, NHL, Fight Night, FaceBreaker, Celebrity Sports Showdown, EA Playground.

Bright Light:  Harry Potter.  Working on Hasbro properties.

Criterion:  Burnout, BLACK

Phenomic:  Settlers

Dice:  Battlefield, Mirror's Edge

EA Mobile Romania:  Mobile games

EA Mobile India:  Also Mobile games

EA China:  EA Sports FIFA Online

Not entirely sure I didn't leave anything out.

[NiX]

Is it bad that kind of hope they do something with Mythic? I also suspect they'll consolidate mobile offices and a few of the places with titles that have been under performing. They may also continue their tradition of shutting down MMO's before they launch by canning Bioware Austin.

[schild]

I think we should run brackets and bet on who's closing, because at this point, I'm feeling heartless. Fantasy Firings. Let's dance.

[AngryGumball]

Ho Velorath forgot to list Ultima Online under Mythic! *zing*
Or does UO still count with its 25-100k(no clue) subscriber number?

[schild]

UO is dead. Keeping a Chinese office makes no sense, I can't see EA China being that profitable but I could be wrong as the Chinese are CHEAP. I would wager Bioware Austin gets at least a hiring freeze. Making a F2P RMT MMO with that many people is "doing it wrong." DICE will probably lose a handful of people given how shitty Battlefield Heroes has been received and how poorly ME is performing - I knew they should've given Faith bigger tits. Romania and India serve no purpose. Any studio can make mobile titles. All they need is a programmer, designer and artist. Army of Two did OK but SSX comes out too slowly and costs too much to make, so I see Montreal getting cuts. The safest studios are Bioware Edmonton, Maxis, and Bright Light, imo.

Edit: I say UO is dead because I simply don't see them keeping it running, Maybe SOE will pick it up take the stupid stuff out and somehow make huge profits off that also.

[NiX]

How many people would cry if they consolidated Mythic with Bioware Austin?

[schild]

How many people would cry if they consolidated Mythic with Bioware Austin?

Like, maybe 4.

Edit: Unnecessarily mean.

[Montague]

Is it bad that kind of hope they do something with Mythic? I also suspect they'll consolidate mobile offices and a few of the places with titles that have been under performing. They may also continue their tradition of shutting down MMO's before they launch by canning Bioware Austin.

I'd be surprised if Jacobs doesn't give a "Folks, it's been a lot of fun but it's time for me to move on" speech in a few months.

[Velorath]

UO is dead. Keeping a Chinese office makes no sense, I can't see EA China being that profitable but I could be wrong as the Chinese are CHEAP.

EA China's main product is FIFA Online.  Apparently they partnered with Neowiz to release it in Korea where they now claim to have 4.4 million subscribers.

After Facebreaker and Celebrity Sports Showdown tanked, I'd expect some cuts at EA Canada (which claims to be the World's largest development studio).

Pandemic has some issues in that Destroy All Humans seems to be going downhill, I don't think they have the Battlefront license anymore (Free Radical was working on Battlefront 3 until their recent closing), and I don't think Mercs 2 did all that well either.

Redwood Shores and Maxis might see some cuts.  Jeff Green (formerly of 1Up, now working on the Sims Animals team or somesuch at EA) mentioned on a recent Gamers with Jobs podcast that the first two projects he was put on after joining EA a couple months back were canceled.

Criterion's only major product right now is Burnout Paradise, which they've been churning out free content for.  Has this content continued to generate enough sales of the game to make it cost effective?  I have no idea.  They're putting out a new Sku for Paradise next month which includes all the free content on the disc.  Other than that I don't know if they've announced any other retail products at the moment.

Mythic would be an obvious choice.

Dice... maybe the Mirror's Edge team will get cut back or folded in with another team for work on the sequel which is supposedly still going to be coming.

Montreal?  Amry of Two was a big enough disappointment that I can see that team getting cut completely.

[Merusk]

Oh yeah, Mythic, Bioware and Bioware Austin will all be combined under one umbrella. Obvious suitlogic is obvious: "They're all making Online games!"  New name or perhaps keeping the Bioware one, since they're the ones releasing a game.

Pandemic was the next one to tick off my, "Nope they're gone" sense.  Maybe merged with Dice.  Shooters are all alike, rite?

EA Montreal and EA Canada being merged under one banner also seems rather "duh."

As for the 9th? Maxis will be gone or merged elsewhere to continue shitting out patches for Sims games as Spore took a spoor.

[AngryGumball]

heh after reading your guys casually merging all these studios I'm sitting here waving my hands in the air going ZOMG ZOMG but where is the spirit and soul of the studio, you cannot merge Pandemic and Dice they have two distinct souls. :P I hate both studios for different reasons. Now if you closed both and reopened under a different name.

Same with merging Mythic and Bioware, or even the two separate Bioware studios since we know they are on different games.

Of course I'm saying this just as a gamer with no business sense in mind. Plus a snarky nostalgic memory of their past games of which most of you with foul mouths wouldn't understand in a polite manner.

[schild]

The soul of Mythic and Bioware Austin is more in line with eachother than Bioware Austin and Bioware Edmonton.

[HaemishM]

Those souls were part of the purcahse deals. EA doesn't leave anything on the table. 

[MahrinSkel]

The soul of Mythic and Bioware Austin is more in line with eachother than Bioware Austin and Bioware Edmonton.

But neither one has any desire to run the other, nor any desire to move.  It would be very difficult to get either team to pick up and go without losing half of them along the way, and Mythic also has a rather large CS operation in place.

A closure/merger is something you do because either the financials demand it, or because you've squeezed all of the juice out of an acquisition and it's time to bring the corporate soldiers you sent for reinforcements home.  Mythic and BioWareAustin are still too early in their borgification for that (dunno much about BioWare Demonton).

Doesn't mean it couldn't happen.  But which shops get merged into which, and who gets a bungee-line rescue from the wreckage, will be the true acid test of whether we are really seeing a "New EA".

I'm going to lay the long shot: At least one major American sports franchise will now be getting developed over-seas.  Maybe they test the waters by starting with one of the non-central pieces of the franchises (like the Street spinoffs).

--Dave

[Azazel]

As part of this, EA should fire Jacobs, Barnett and anyone else in power at Mythic and headhunt someone from Blizzard who would be better at running an MMO then they have been.

Like the Blizzard janitorial staff.
 

[nurtsi]

Of that list, I'd keep Redwood shores (Dead space was cool, Sims is Sims), Bioware (just for their history mostly, maybe they should go as well, not really a good reason to keep them) and Dice (Mirror's Edge had some novelty value, gotta reward at least trying). I wouldn't miss the rest. Of course "the rest" probably make 80% of the profits. I'm glad I'm not running the company.

[Trippy]

Of that list, I'd keep Redwood shores (Dead space was cool, Sims is Sims)

Redwood Shores is their HQs. If they close that down it'll be the end

[NiX]

EA Canada probably won't see much happen to them. They're still profitable, though I wouldn't be surprised to see more than Blackbox consolidated into that building. I expect EA Montreal to be moved to Vancouver and that office shut down.

I'm sure it would save them money to shut down the small office they have here in Toronto and move it to the EA Canada building. - It would seem it has disappeared already.

[AngryGumball]

I'm ready to see a Tibirium like exposure. Was it the same Black Box people guiding Need for Speed: Underground, then Need for Speed: Underground 2, then Need for Speed: Most Wanted. Then the dropoffs started with Carbon, Pro street, to Undercover. I understand there was 2 teams, were they both Black Box teams like Team A and B just alternating products each year?

How was undercover released seemingly not playing smoothly on the PC, and its initial starting race car such a clunker, compared to NFS:Underground/2 where it gives you a smoothly running car to experience what the future holds then drops you into the newbie car. Most Wanted exposed you to great car at beginning then gave you newbie car.

Or was EA headhonchos just to slow to realize the problem by 3 years and 3 games to realize wow these people lost their minds and could not recover or were these people scamming the money and each product.

I keep hearing John Davidson screaming for several podcasts....Each version of NFS has sold 6-8 million copies across all the platforms released. On one hand I believe him cuz they did push a lot of versions out there, but that can't be true for the latest versions otherwise why shutter the franchise.

[Velorath]

Black Box, and the Need for Speed and Skate franchises are getting absorbed into EA Canada (they're pretty much located in the same area), so they aren't really shuttering the Need for Speed franchise.

[WindupAtheist]

I say UO is dead because I simply don't see them keeping it running, Maybe SOE will pick it up take the stupid stuff out and somehow make huge profits off that also.

Yeah, ever since EA taking it in the shitpipe hit the headlines, I've been thinking that UO may have dodged it's last bullet. Strangely enough, I find myself thinking it's probably as good a time as any to finally put the old girl to bed. Not because of ninjas, or elves, or Trammel, or any particular design choice, but because the whole thing is just really creaky and neglected. For some reason it was just this year that the game started to really feel hopelessly old, even to me. I could go into why, but I won't bother. My account hasn't been active in months.

I can't see SOE picking it up, either. For one, UO being a spaghetti pile of legacy code that even it's own devs no longer understood was a running joke all the way back when SWG was the new shiny. Just getting it up on it's feet under new management would have to be a nightmare compared to stuff like Matrix or Vanguard, both of which were more or less standard 3D dikus, and both of which were young and not tangled up by a decade's worth of tinkering by multiple generations of developers.

Besides which, EA won't sell it even if SOE wants it. They'll just kill it out of apathy, or fear of looking stupid if SOE somehow did manage to do something good with it. They'll kill it, and the few tens of thousands of people who are UO players and not really MMO players in the general sense at all, people who are just plain never going to play WoW ever, will pile into the freeshard scene. Which is really why I don't care if EA kills it. They can pull the plug tomorrow, and if I suddently get the urge to play UO five years from now, I'll be able to.

[UnSub]

This may have been said already, but my understanding is that Pandemic has already seen some pretty heavy staff cuts. Whether or not they are forced to merge is another story.

[ghost]

Maybe I'm wrong on this, but it would seem to me that MMOs would be one of the first things to go in a crunch time.  When a company wants to cut overhead they cut people because they are one of the biggest overhead costs.  I would be very surprised to not see Mythic at least feel a little bit of this.  It will be interesting to see what they do with the Star Wars MMO.  The IP sure can sell a lot in and of itself, however the Old Republic is a bit out there for most "main stream" Star Wars fans. 

[UnSub]

The trade-off analysis of MMOs depends on how long-tail the management viewpoint is on them. MMOs can generate more revenue over a longer period of time than any single player title. However, if cuts have to be made today, expect any unreleased MMOs to go on "official hiatus" unless they are seen as a guaranteed hit.

Also: paid interns, CS and QA staff would probably be the first to go from any project.

[Goreschach]

The trade-off analysis of MMOs depends on how long-tail the management viewpoint is on them. MMOs can generate more revenue over a longer period of time than any single player title. However, if cuts have to be made today, expect any unreleased MMOs to go on "official hiatus" unless they are seen as a guaranteed hit.

That would depend on how far along the MMO is. If one is fairly far along, and isn't completely unanticipated, they'd want to at least try to recoup as much development cost as possible from the initial box sales. Box sales for recent MMO's have been doing well. People are bored of WoW and, even though most new MMO's suck, are at least willing to try them. EA would be more likely to dump early projects that they haven't invested much in, or projects that are already live and dwindling.

[Azazel]

Such as what happened with WAR. And they got, what? A month's sales spike out of it... 

[Soln]

everything that EA has or is planning is dead unless it has a franchise or media tie-in.  Srsly.  So FIFA and the like may still exist.  And Spore will be milked till they turn the lights out.  But ya -- this is yer father's EA, all over again.

[Velorath]

But ya -- this is yer father's EA, all over again.

This is going to be just about every publisher/developer the way things are going.  One big flop is all it takes to decimate a studio.  Just ask Factor 5 and Free Radical.

[UnSub]

I found out in an article over the weekend that Free Radical paid its staff for overtime. So ends that experiment! 

[KallDrexx]

This may have been said already, but my understanding is that Pandemic has already seen some pretty heavy staff cuts. Whether or not they are forced to merge is another story.

I hope not, at least for Pandemic AU's sake.  They already had 2 sets of layoffs this year, first set was due to WB pulling the batman license for the game they were working on, then another set of layoffs when EA did the blanket layoff.  Would be a shame to see it further reduced.

[UnSub]

This may have been said already, but my understanding is that Pandemic has already seen some pretty heavy staff cuts. Whether or not they are forced to merge is another story.

I hope not, at least for Pandemic AU's sake.  They already had 2 sets of layoffs this year, first set was due to WB pulling the batman license for the game they were working on, then another set of layoffs when EA did the blanket layoff.  Would be a shame to see it further reduced.

Yeah, these were the staff cuts I was referring to. Right now I'm guessing that selling out to EA doesn't seem to have been such a great idea.

[eldaec]

Well, let's take a look at what studios EA actually has:

EALA (formerly Dreamworks Interactive, and fused with part of Westwood):  Command & Conquer, Lord of the Rings, Medal of Honor, Boom Blox.  Also develops mobile titles.

Pandemic (Teams in LA, Brisbane, and Melbourne):  Star Wars Battlefront, Mercenaries, Destroy All Humans, Full Spectrum Warrior.  Currently working on Saboteur.

Tiburon:  Madden, NCAA, Tiger Woods, NASCAR

Redwood Shores:  The Sims, Dead Space, Godfather, Simpsons

Maxis:  Spore

Salt Lake (formerly Headgate Studios): formerly worked on PGA golf games.  Now developing a Nerf title and a Littlest Pet Shop title.

Mythic:  DAOC, Warhammer

Bioware:  Mass Effect, Dragon Age

Bioware Austin:  SW:TOR

EA Montréal:  Army of Two, SSX Blur, Boogie

Black Box:  Need for Speed, Skate

EA Canada:  FIFA Soccer, NBA LIVE, NHL, Fight Night, FaceBreaker, Celebrity Sports Showdown, EA Playground.

Bright Light:  Harry Potter.  Working on Hasbro properties.

Criterion:  Burnout, BLACK

Phenomic:  Settlers

Dice:  Battlefield, Mirror's Edge

EA Mobile Romania:  Mobile games

EA Mobile India:  Also Mobile games

EA China:  EA Sports FIFA Online

Not entirely sure I didn't leave anything out.

My guess. Based on not much.

Either BioWare, Bioware Austin, or Mythic is in trouble next time around, but purchase is too recent so too many EA management will be invested in them right now.