EA Lays Off About 350 Employees, Closes Offices In Russia & Japan While Addressing Challenges

2019 has been a challenging year for the gaming industry, it seems, as EA announced they’re laying off about 350 employees including the closure of EA offices in Russia and Japan.

As revealed, EA will be cutting off roles from the marketing and publishing organization and operations teams. However, it appears the layoffs had been expected for quite a while now. According to a Kotaku report,  those within the said organizations were expecting a reorganization since October of last year. The decision was made to refine the organization and to address challenges.

Fortunately, however, an EA spokesperson confirmed that severance pay will be provided to affected employees.

“Yes, we are working with employees to try and find other roles inside the company. For those that are leaving the company, we will also be providing severance and other resources. I’m not able to provide the details on the severance, but we work hard to be as helpful as we possibly can.”

Read on below for the full statement directly from EA CEO Andrew Wilson:

Today we took some important steps as a company to address our challenges and prepare for the opportunities ahead.  As we look across a changing world around us, it’s clear that we must change with it.  We’re making deliberate moves to better deliver on our commitments, refine our organization and meet the needs of our players.  As part of this, we have made changes to our marketing and publishing organization, our operations teams, and we are ramping down our current presence in Japan and Russia as we focus on different ways to serve our players in those markets.  In addition to organizational changes, we are deeply focused on increasing quality in our games and services.  Great games will continue to be at the core of everything we do, and we are thinking differently about how to amaze and inspire our players.

This is a difficult day.  The changes we’re making today will impact about 350 roles in our 9,000-person company.  These are important but very hard decisions, and we do not take them lightly. We are friends and colleagues at EA, we appreciate and value everyone’s contributions, and we are doing everything we can to ensure we are looking after our people to help them through this period to find their next opportunity. This is our top priority.

—  Andrew Wilson, CEO of Electronic Arts