Topic: EA fire tons of employees, blame gamers.

[Ratty]

http://gamepolitics.com/2013/04/25/ea-acknowledges-layoffs-statement-avoids-numbers

...The company went on to say that the choices they are making are "hard" but essential to "showing players around the world why to spend their time with us."

Of course, some decent customer service, a better bedside manner, and not having a tin ear when it comes to complaints would go a lot farther than firing a bunch of employees. EA's previous statement on the series of worldwide layoffs indicated that the company was restructuring to get ready for the next console cycle, so this latest statement is kind of odd.

Yeah it's our fault for being responsible consumers and just not bending over and taking it every time the management at EA tries to screw us over. As someone in the comments to the story noted their unwillingness to release numbers on this indicates it's very large number of employees being laid off.

[X]

I can see those very employees suing EA out of house and home. And if it does there won't be anything left of EA to salvage. You don't fire workers just to restructure a business and then blame it on the consumer. I call bulls**t and bad form on them.

[VladCT]

It won't be long before interaction between EA and consumers degrade into a series of FU's, just like that one scene in DmC.

[Phoenix7786]

Having seen EA on its humble days on the Sega with stuff like the Strike series, General Chaos, and the Mutant League games it's a sad affair to see them have sunk this low. To me this is a lesson what happens when you become too massive in size and too attached to non-gamer shareholders who only care about the dollar rather than innovation.

[X]

I miss the mutant league series. Why didn't they make more then just hockey and baseball? We could have gotten mutant league Basketball, Golf, Bowling, Racing, Darts lol!

[Phoenix7786]

From what I recall MLH sold very poorly, to the point where they lost faith in it.
Like you said though I've long dreamed of MLB. Just imagine the shenanigans. An exploding baseball that will blow up the batter (or your catcher if you're not careful!), landmine bases, and rocket-powered bats that guarantee long hits.

[VladCT]

http://gamepolitics.com/2013/04/26/leaked-internal-memo-reveals-organizational-structure-changes-ea
So apparently they are indeed reorganizing.

EA is a great company, with talented and hard-working teams, a strong portfolio of products and an extremely bright future.

Yeah, keep telling yourselves that. lol

[Kale]

I don't see anywhere they blame gamers... I wouldn't put it pass them, but I don't see it.

EA is a great company though. In many sense of the word. One, It's a great company. A large comany. Two, it's a  great company to work for...... to get a portfolio up. Three,  it's a great company with a great amount of IPs.

It's too bad it has so many problems ... like crappy CEO higher ups, and being a publicly traded one.

[Mooning Freddy]

EA sucks anyway IMHO. Have they made anything original recently? They keep milking the rotting corpse of Westwood's C&C and other games they inherited as an evil megacorporation from smaller companies now damned to obscurity.

Sounding like a little bitch here, but there you have it.

Edit: Realized they're rebooting Command & Conquer now. God help us all.

[Ratty]

I don't see anywhere they blame gamers... I wouldn't put it pass them, but I don't see it.

...The company went on to say that the choices they are making are "hard" but essential to "showing players around the world why to spend their time with us."

Translation: "No really it's essential we fire all these people so gamers will realize how important it is for them to buy all our products no matter what!" The implication being that if "players around the world" had spent more of their "time" (money) "with us" (on their products) then they wouldn't have to do the layoffs. Even though according to previous statements these layoffs are due to restructuring for a new console generation and have nothing to do with the lost profits that have resulted from their terrible business decisions (like vastly over budgeting Dead Space 3) and the backlash against their anti-consumer DRM policies. It's a subtle attempt to induce a guilt trip in the consumer for the losses EA has brought on themselves.

[Phoenix7786]

It's a subtle attempt to induce a guilt trip in the consumer for the losses EA has brought on themselves.

Yep and we're not that dumb. First person they NEED to lay off though is their PR reps. I simply cannot conceive how any PR would sanction that stupid message.

[Donvermicelli]

To be honest I hope EA burns to the ground and will serve as a warning to the rest. EA stands for all that I fear and loathe in the gaming world.
God knows I miss Westwood, not just for their awesome C&C series (forget any titles that were produced by EA) but also for other awesome RPG games like NOX. Still one of the  most compelling RPG's of it's time.

Sometimes sacrifices are needed to make people see the bigger picture, bigger picture is that gamers, even the mainstream ones, grow tired of putting their hopes up for a game and only having it result in disappointment with another milking attempt or buglittered version. Let's hope that the few remaining respectable gaming giants don't follow the same path as EA did.

[JR]

I always hate to hear about people losing their jobs, but with the way things have been going with EA, it's been inevitable. I just hope this is a sign that gamers as a whole are less likely to put up with the way the big-name publishers have been doing business these past years, and not just a matter of sales vs. budget. It's appalling, and downright embarrassing for the gaming industry in general.

I do find it funny that EA has been voted Worst Company in America for 2 straight years on Consumerist, though. The fact that it beat out Bank of America, Comcast, etc., is just a testament to how poor of a job they're doing. They beat out a company that was fraudulently foreclosing on people's houses, for chrissakes! It just astounds me that public perception of a video game publisher can be that bad. 

[darkmanx_429]

This is actually not new news unfortunately. This is happening alot in the game industry as of late. It can also be partly blamed because of the uncontrollable rate of social media apps/games growning and eating up a large part of the gaming market. Alot of people with my skill sets are being put out to pasture and because of that fact, the game companies are only taking the best of the best. It's a battlefield right now in the business The bad part of about it is I am also competing with industry vets with 15 or more years experience looking for work. It's really tough at the moment... I can definitely tell you it's not because of gamers per say, but casual gamers (the niche market) interests have changed most executives (like all companies) are still making money hand over fist.

[Inccubus]

What the hell is going on with these big name VG companies? Do they seriously think themselves so privileged as to dictate to their consumers like this. When exactly did everyone forget that their success depends on their consumers standing behind them? It's like they're all TRYING to implode themselves.