Electronic Arts announced yesterday it would be eliminating 1500 jobs, cutting a dozen in-development games and closing “several facilities”. According to multiple sources, those cutbacks include studios like Pandemic, Maxis and nearly the entire Command & Conquer team.
Sources tell Kotaku that the team working on Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight was warned of its fate today, with almost the entire team expected to be let go after the real-time strategy game ships some time in 2010.
Also said to be affected heavily are Spore and The Sims studio EA Maxis, social network gaming Rupture Studios and Pandemic LA. Those development studios are said to be hit with substantial layoffs, according to a source, with remaining employees relocated to EA headquarters in Los Angeles and Redwood Shores.
EA is rumored to have already laid off staff at Tiburon, Mythic Entertainment and Black Box, reports which the company has yet to confirm.
We’ve reached out to Electronic Arts to verify these latest details, but have not yet heard back.
brent3000
November 11, 2009 at 8:55 AM
Thats going to kill C&C TL :( and for the final release of the series i would hate to see it go down hill when they know that its the final game they will be working on…
God dam EA… If this C&C fails its their blood…
Report PermalinkVernatia
November 11, 2009 at 9:14 AM
They’ve already sent it down hill, they’ve scrapped base building basically (except for the “defence” general), removed the skrin, and tiberium as a resource (it exists, but only as decoration), NOD and GDI have joined forces and are fighting people who don’t want them to have joined forces… sounds like a really bad game… doesn’t mean I won’t get it though.
Don’t believe me, check out the C&C forums.
Report PermalinkMr Waffle
November 11, 2009 at 9:34 AM
lol. So they killed Westwood, and now they’re killing Westwood’s successors… EA have certainly decided to cash in on any good will that might have built up the last couple of years.
Report PermalinkAndrew Hobbs
November 11, 2009 at 9:37 AM
Are they seriously struggling that much?
I thought they were doing pretty OK. The quality of their games have been improving drastically as of late, and it seems like they actually sort of give a shit now that they aren’t the biggest publisher in the world.
It looks like Activision and EA traded places: EA actually cares a bit now about its games, Activision won’t listen to anyone anywhere about anything unless it’s cushioned by many, many layers of money.
Report PermalinkGreg Tannahill
November 11, 2009 at 1:37 PM
Maxis layoffs don’t makes sense – last I heard that place was a money-printing factory – unless maybe it was a sub-team working on something a bit more commercially chancy than Spore or The Sims.
Report Permalinkplmko
November 11, 2009 at 3:37 PM
Ever considered that the studio may have bloated due to success?
Report PermalinkGreg Tannahill
November 11, 2009 at 4:46 PM
“Heavily affected” isn’t trimming the fat, it’s axing teams. Maxis is now no longer doing something that it used to be doing, or it’s doing less of something that it previously did a lot of. For a game development studio, that’s got to mean cuts to speculative development, a real title in development, or support for an existing title.
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