Rumour of Mythic Layoffs

[squirrel]

Rumour has it Mythic laid of 80 people today (approx. 40% of the team). No idea if this is true, got it through a somewhat reliable source though. If so I would think WAR is going into bunker/maintenance mode pretty much immediately.

[Shatter]

No more parties?

[Trippy]

Were they able to preserve their sunglasses budget?

[Arthur_Parker]

I'm sorry for anyone caught by this, but I think everyone knew it was coming.

http://twitter.com/JoshDrescher

If this message is for you, you'll know what it means: The gathering seems to be at Coastal, starting any time now.
about 1 hour ago from web

[Velorath]

EA is laying off people in a few studios.

Edit: Also, if I'm not mistaken, their quarterly financial report is today.

[IainC]

Unless I'm reading too much into cryptic status updates, it looks as though Jeff Hickman has gone as well which is a pretty senior scalp to take. Jess Folsom from the community team confirmed the layoffs on her Facebook page.

[Montague]

Unless I'm reading too much into cryptic status updates, it looks as though Jeff Hickman has gone as well which is a pretty senior scalp to take. Jess Folsom from the community team confirmed the layoffs on her Facebook page.

Ouch. EA looks to be cutting and running with regards to WAR. What could have been...

[Soln]

this is sad, given the non-stop effort that team has been making in the last year.  WAR could easily survive as a polished niche game, which is where it is headed.  Hopefully the good people will be picked up.


of course, presumably Paul is still safe? 



Cue Lum to defend  Paul in 1..2..3...

[Pennilenko]

It always saddens me to see people get laid off. I hope everybody good or bad finds another job they are happy with.

[fuser]

this is sad, given the non-stop effort that team has been making in the last year.  WAR could easily survive as a polished niche game, which is where it is headed.  Hopefully the good people will be picked up.

Sad to see it happening but the writings on the wall the games going away. I don't think the free T1 will transition into subs and the game and the bleeding will continue.

Sorry to all the hard work people put in to see it end like this  

[Arthur_Parker]

http://kotaku.com/5400594/

Electronic Arts has taken the ax to hundreds of employees at locations in Burnaby, Orlando and San Francisco today, according to chatter from former EA employees, issuing layoffs the same day it confirms a buyout of social gaming publisher Playfish.

Said to be affected are EA's Tiburon and Black Box studios, located in Orlando, Florida and Burnaby, British Columbia, respectively. The Tiburon studio is responsible for EA Sports' Madden, NCAA Football and Tiger Woods PGA Tour franchises, as well as its upcoming mixed martial arts offering, EA Sports MMA. Black Box has been largely responsible for the publisher's Need For Speed and Skate series.

Both developers were previously affected by layoffs over the past year as part of a previously announced restructuring plan.

Also rumored to be affected are EA Redwood Shores' quality assurance team and Mythic Entertainment. Tweets from ex-staffers at those studios indicate "huge chunks" let go at the former, approximately 40% laid off at the latter.

Rumors of Electronic Arts' plans to cull staffers began circulating last week. The cutbacks appear to have been rolled out over the course of the past few days, ahead of EA's quarterly earnings report and alongside confirmation of the publisher's acquisition of Playfish, said to be a $300 million investment in the social gaming developer.

Those cuts extend to "hundreds" of EA employees and unspecified game projects, according to tipsters.

We've contacted Electronic Arts for confirmation on the cutbacks, but have not yet heard back.

[BitWarrior]

The fact that on the same day EA is purchasing Playfish just adds insult to injury. If only WAR was a Facebook app...

[Sir T]

The fact that on the same day EA is purchasing Playfish just adds insult to injury. If only WAR was a Facebook app...

Certainly seems to be a big indicator of where they see the industry going.

[Arthur_Parker]

Does facebook have experience bars?

[Tarami]

Does facebook have experience bars?

With Mythic's proven know-how of bars, I'm sure Playfish can borrow some talent to put them in if not.

[HaemishM]

Way to be assholes. Piss $300 million on fucking web-game developer, then layoff an asston of people working on actual games. Fuck you, EA.

[Stormwaltz]

Insert your preferred sarcastic comment here.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25999

[Malakili]

This Warhammer game is fucking going places, let me tell you.

[schild]

Every article I've read understates just how many people got canned from EA.

Way to be assholes. Piss $300 million on fucking web-game developer, then layoff an asston of people working on actual games. Fuck you, EA.

/shrug, hard to be mad when 80% of the company was working on crap. I didn't see any layoffs at Bioware [EDMONTON] or Visceral, so I can honestly say layoffs in the sports and mmog divisions were a long time coming.

[Arthur_Parker]

EA to cut 1,500 jobs, Q2 loss widens

Electronic Arts Inc. on Monday announced it will cut about 1,500 jobs, and reported a second quarter loss of $391 million, or $1.21 a share, widened from a loss of $310 million, or 97 cents a share in the same period last year.

The Redwood City company (NASDAQ:ERTS) had revenue of $788 million, down from $894 million in the year-ago quarter. During the quarter, EA had a net revenue deferral of $359 million related to online-enabled packaged goods and digital content, compared to $232 million in the prior year quarter.

Excluding items, the company's revenue would have been $1.147 billion, up 2 percent from $1.126 billlion in the same quarter last year. Income would have been $19 million, or 6 cents a share, compared with a non-GAAP loss of $20 million, or 6 cents a share in the same quarter last year.

Analysts expected, on average, earnings of 7 cents a share on $1.13 billion revenue.

EA also said Monday it will close several facilities as part of a cost-cutting move that is expected to save about $100 million. The company expects restructuring charges of $130 to $150 million.

[schild]

Hah. Right after I posted what I posted, a number around what was actually laid off was posted. Nice timing on that I suppose.

[Velorath]

http://kotaku.com/5400594/

All that info is readily available on Gamasutra (and the Playfish stuff has even been announced in EA press releases), and yet you link to a Kotaku article...

[Arthur_Parker]

All that info is readily available on Gamasutra (and the Playfish stuff has even been announced in EA press releases), and yet you link to a Kotaku article...

I didn't see the "Rumors of Electronic Arts' plans to cull staffers began circulating last week" part on Gamasutra, but my bad, I guess.

[Xanthippe]

It's amazing to me that Playfish is worth 300 million to somebody.  How do they make most of their money - by people actually micro-transing in their games or by offer advertising agreements with other companies?

[BitWarrior]

It's amazing to me that Playfish is worth 300 million to somebody.  How do they make most of their money - by people actually micro-transing in their games or by offer advertising agreements with other companies?

From an interview with John Earner, Vice President of Product Management at Playfish:

Crispy Gamer: That's a good point, but here's the million-dollar question: How does your company monetize that (besides on iPhone) -- how do you make money on Facebook, MySpace and Bebo?

Earner: Great question. First, some background: We are venture-funded by Accel Partners and Index Ventures, two tier-one venture capital firms. We have $21 million in funding. We don't need to touch that money. We are highly profitable -- although I can't share our exact revenue numbers -- and the way we do it is a combination of advertising, direct transactions from players spending a few dollars at a time on virtual items or perks in each of our games, and the ability for users to complete offers for free coins.

Amongst those three things we've found quite a profitable business. Microtransactions have been getting a lot of press and hype for being the next possible business-model paradigm. Whether or not it can change journalism or the Internet remains to be told, but we know it's a highly successful business model for games, and one that serves us quite well. What's really going on here is that the last generation of online games was predicated on a person playing the game for an hour, and making a quick decision after that hour whether or not they wanted to spend $9.99 and download a casual game. That model doesn't make sense, because people have so many choices and so little time to make an impulsive decision in that hour on whether or not to spend $10.

By making the games free-to-play and virtually distributed -- socially distributed on Facebook and MySpace -- everyone gets a chance to enjoy the game. And some percentage of those people -- a single-digit number, but a good one -- over time realize that they can improve their game experience by increasing their status or leveling up faster, and they choose to spend money. And that model is an effective model with which you can have tens of millions of people playing your game every month.

Source

[schild]

RMT is profitable. Period.

Next query.

[Ingmar]

Its hard to know exactly what Playfish's financials were like but the common estimate I'm seeing is they had revenues of about $75 million a year. Mind you that says nothing about profitability, I wouldn't know where to start guessing on that, but $300 miillion for a company with $75 million in revenues is possibly a bargain.

The TechCrunch article on the acquisition implied it probably would have sold for more if it weren't for all the scummy lead gen/fake ad scam stuff that surrounds other companies in the same space (Zynga is one they particularly like to single out).

[01101010]

RMT is profitable. Period.

Next query.

Which just reminds me of PA's one strip.

[Shatter]

Please confirm Paul got the chop...please for the love of god

[Morfiend]

Please confirm Paul got the chop...please for the love of god

 

See above motivational poster.

He probably got moved to lead Dev on SWTOR. 

[Simond]

Don't even fucking joke about that.

[fuser]

EA execs have announced they have canceled "over a dozen" game titles, although specific games were not mentioned.

Wonder what got nuked, Need for Speed MMO?

[ghost]

Does facebook have experience bars?

It seems to be the only thing it was missing

[Salamok]

Does facebook have experience bars?

duh # of friends

[Redgiant]

Restatements of the obvious maint mode pasture...

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?p=1961738#post1961738