this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2026
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Always fun to develop a record-selling game. You lose your job as a thanks! ๐Ÿคฎ

top 22 comments
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[โ€“] SalamenceFury@piefed.social 4 points 29 minutes ago

Turns out when you make a 100 million active player target it doesn't get hit and they use it as an excuse to fire you. GG.

[โ€“] RickyRigatoni@piefed.zip 39 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Did your game do poorly? Straight to unemployment.

Did your game do very well? Believe it or not, straight to unemployment.

[โ€“] Jackhammer_Joe@lemmy.world 13 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Your game did so-so? Also: straight to unemployment.

[โ€“] Brewchin@lemmy.world 46 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[โ€“] cogman@lemmy.world 20 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

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 don't think contractors count towards "layoffs".

[โ€“] Brewchin@lemmy.world 7 points 2 hours ago

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.

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.

[โ€“] QuentinCallaghan@sopuli.xyz 38 points 3 hours ago

"EA is EA, even if you fried it with butter."

[โ€“] Soulphite@reddthat.com 10 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[โ€“] CascadianGiraffe@lemmy.world 1 points 33 minutes ago* (last edited 33 minutes ago) (1 children)

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).

[โ€“] Soulphite@reddthat.com 1 points 2 minutes ago

Well shit, here I thought I was window dressing the severance package, but I guess it's actually something they'd enjoy.

They already broke the record, they won't be needing those peons anymore.

[โ€“] jballs@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 hours ago

Battlefield 6 was the best-selling game in the U.S. in 2025.

Wow that's surprising to me considering how it required Secure Boot enabled, which bricked a lot of people's PCs. I installed the beta for my son and thought "there's no fucking way the average gamer is going to be able to do this."

[โ€“] devolution@lemmy.world 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

AI games. Fuck over everything.

Battlefield was already refried slop before LLM development was a thing.

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?

[โ€“] madjo@piefed.social 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

TrIpLe a game publisher doing Triple A game publisher shit... Who the hell still buys EA games?!

[โ€“] socsa@piefed.social 1 points 2 hours ago

I'm sure they just understand the problems with glorifying warfare in video games marketed to children.

Alright fk EA with a rusty spoon

[โ€“] GameOverFlow@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 hours ago

They just give up to fix the game. Pathetic.