Always fun to develop a record-selling game. You lose your job as a thanks! 🤮
Anyone who gives EA money is an absolute moron and is part of the problem.
I think at this stage it’s children who are easily impressionable and using their parent’s credit cards to buy EA games, is the company’s customer base. EA hasn’t produced a good game for a long awhile. Battlefield games had been the only games I played much before 2020, but since then I stopped caring about EA.
I’ll admit I still give them money as they have a few of my favorite franchises I grew up with, ME Dragon age, Dead Space.
And these are all turning to shit, besides Dead Space. That was great.
Nah, plenty of grown ass adults who don’t care, don’t notice or think this counts as progress
The problem is, they serve the audience garmer non gamer: all sports simulation like: FIFA, NBA, NHL, Madden etc are with them and then games like Battlefield. I know a bunch of people that play these games, but don’t consider themselves as gamers and give 0 fucks how the industrie is doimg.
The normies are always the issue
“EA is EA, even if you fried it with butter.”
Classic modern tech company formula. If any records or targets are broken, mass layoffs must happen.
I think MBA schools have forgotten the golden rule of economics: you get what you incentivise for. Guaranteed unemployment isn’t it.
This is, unfortunately, just typical of the gaming industry in general.
Effectively for all these game studios, everyone is on contract for the duration of the project. Once that finishes, they fire everyone and let them compete for the next contract. Because the game industry is highly competitive and having “EA” on your resume is impressive, they can get away with this behavior as they can always find more bodies to work. It allows EA to continually pay shit and have a bad working environment because people yern to do something creative.
I’ve heard the same. If you’re in the games industry and you finish shipping usually you’re laid off and then you move on to the next project. When a new battlefield comes along they’ll just start hiring everyone again whether they worked on the last one or not. It’s not really a long-term strategy but they don’t care. It’s about short-term gains.
You make good points about them being contractors and the CV aspects. I’d not thought of that.
But it’s not just in gaming. It’s all of the tech space, or at least those run by American companies, and applies to full time staff. The last decade or so of my tech career is a mirror image of it.
Though it’s hard to tell if it’s layoff FOMO, AI changes, or AI being used as an excuse. Something’s changed in recent years.
Interest rates are higher so companies have a higher pressure to turn big profits instead of other metrics of success.
Something’s changed in recent years.
Ever since that fucking idea of the lootbox.
I don’t think contractors count towards “layoffs”.
You know, a few months before I was laid off at my previous job, they did announce record-breaking year-over-year profits right after I built them a new site, and then they laid me off a few months after that.
Then again, I’ve been at my current company for a few years now, and they have been announcing record-breaking year-over-year profits over the past 3 years and it’s been fine, so I guess it depends lol
It probably does, and I doubt the difference is anything to do with you. (Beyond not sticking your head above the KPI parapet, etc).
The last place I was laid off from was notorious for a LIFO/stack policy whenever heads needed to roll. The one before that looked purely at the highest earners. And the one before that did whatever the nice vulture capitalists told them to do… or else.
None of them looked at how much you made (or retained) for the company, customer and colleague satisfaction, impact on teams or projects. Just “thought leaders” looking at spreadsheets while telling everyone that they know what they’re doing. And for the IC it’s indistinguishable from Russian roulette.
Yeah, my manager replaced the team with his friends that he hired. It was just a case of nepotism, nothing I did wrong.
At least I have a 30% higher paying job now than I did back then, and this one actually has bonuses that they pay out too.
I wish we could band together and create a company not with the motive of profit for shareholders, but with the motive of wages for employees.
What if the goal was to hire and pay as many people as much as possible, all while creating something really neat.
How do we start this?
Like some else already said co-ops and employee owned businesses. But they all require capital to start, maybe a bank could give you a business loan.
Maybe a government program that doesn’t have a profit motive like the post office?
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Yeh I’m aware of employee owned and co-cooperatively owned companies, but in my experience those are often used as marketing buzzwords.
I think video game development could actually be a space where this could work, but with the saturation of indie and low effort games, a golden opportunity may have already passed.
Step 1: Wake up
Step 2: Realize that people have never been okay with the idea of paying more, they only like to talk about making more (somehow, magically). I feel like rising prices are actually the only thing that can bring down Trump and MAGA, that’s how much people hate it
How exactly and why do you expect people to simply pay more for games so that few people could make more money, likely in a different country? I just don’t see market working like that.
Besides, how would you even start this without investors? Creating a product takes a long time, and you want to pay high wages while the company makes nothing?
Yeah those are great points to consider.
I hope you have a good day.
We produced a record-profit making game and we couldn’t have done it with out you. Now get out and pick up your severance check on the way.
Yet Another common EA L
Alright fk EA with a rusty spoon
They already broke the record, they won’t be needing those peons anymore.
AI games. Fuck over everything.
Battlefield was already refried slop before LLM development was a thing.
EA execs to the employees:
Thanks for making us a lot of money, unfortunately, we need it more than you, our yacht fuel is expensive. We have to let some of you go. We hope you understand. As a token of our appreciation here’s a copy of BF6 and Year 1 Season Pass! Fu… err thank you for all your hard work and dedication.
That would be nice
As someone who worked in the industry, I can say you often had to FIGHT to get your name in the game credits. And you were lucky if you got a copy of whatever you made, if you did it was months later (likely long after you went and bought a copy because you wanted to play with your friends).
You certainly would not get any free digital content. Maybe a shirt or baseball hat if there were any left over from the launch party (that you weren’t invited to because it’s only for upper management and investors).
Well shit, here I thought I was window dressing the severance package, but I guess it’s actually something they’d enjoy.
TrIpLe a game publisher doing Triple A game publisher shit… Who the hell still buys EA games?!
Doesn’t EA do this after pretty much every major release? Bring in a ton of part-timers and consultants in the rush to release. Go live with a buggy half-assed product. Fire most of the team to save costs. Then coast on marketing and DLC for a few years, before you kick off the next dev cycle and do it again?
DICE didn’t use to do that for BFV, BF1, or even Battlefront 2.
“Congratulations and fuck you !” EA probably.
They just give up to fix the game. Pathetic.
I’m sure they just understand the problems with glorifying warfare in video games marketed to children.
Had to scroll all the way to the bottom, it’s disturbing how popular these games are.
