Current and former employees of Electronic Arts have described an oppressive atmosphere following the recent change of ownership. The account comes from Vertical Slice, which spoke with the staff on condition of anonymity. According to them, chaos reigns in the company, management is imposing generative artificial intelligence, and it is growing ever more distant from the development teams.
Mass layoffs have affected several studios, including BioWare, known for its role-playing games, and Respawn. The cuts are taking place in an atmosphere of secrecy: management does not publish lists of those dismissed, and employees are forced to spend weeks learning the fate of colleagues through social networks and private chats.
The publication's interlocutors consider the closure of BioWare's studio to be the outcome of years of pressure. Writers of story-driven games were required to implement mechanics of live-service games, designed to keep players engaged constantly, at the expense of the story and characters. Decisions, it is claimed, were made solely on the basis of reports from research groups.
Company executives openly promote the use of neural networks such as Claude and hint at the possibility of cutting staff through automation. Employees say that Electronic Arts has become a place where financial reports and the personal enrichment of management have come to matter more than the making of games. The company's debt, meanwhile, stands at 20 billion dollars.
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