EA has reportedly laid off over 100 Apex Legends testers out of the blue
Update: It’s now claimed that over 200 employees were let go on Tuesday
Electronic Arts reportedly laid off the entire quality assurance testing team at its Baton Rouge, Louisiana office out of the blue on Tuesday.
That’s according to three Kotaku sources, who said that over 100 contractors were given the news during an unscheduled mandatory Zoom meeting at 8am this morning.
It’s claimed the impacted employees, who worked mainly on Respawn’s battle royale game Apex Legends, will receive 60 days severance, which is less than the length of many of their contracts.
Update
Kotaku has updated its report to claim that over 200 QA testers were let go by EA on Tuesday.
“Testing games is an integral part of delivering the best experiences for our players,” a spokesperson for the publisher told the site in an email. “As part of our ongoing global strategy, we are expanding the distribution of our Apex Legends testing team and ending testing execution that’s been concentrated in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, impacting services provided by our third-party provider.
“Our global team, inclusive of remote playtesters across the U.S., enables us to increase the hours per week we’re able to test and optimize the game and reflects a commitment to understand and better serve our growing community around the world.”
They were reportedly informed that they could collect their personal belongings from the office only under the watch of security.
The layoffs follow last month’s news that EA plans to close Apex Legends Mobile and was cancelling Battlefield Mobile before its official release, while also shutting its developer Industrial Toys.
It also reportedly cancelled an unannounced Titanfall game that was being planned as a single-player experience for Apex Legends.
Further reading
Ex-Apex Legends and Titanfall leads form new studio, Wildlight Entertainment
Apex Legends Season 16, Revelry, launched on February 14. For the first time since the game’s release four years ago, a new season of Apex Legends wasn’t accompanied by a fresh Legend. Instead, Respawn introduced “remastered” Legend classes.
Revelry also added the long-requested Team Deathmatch as a new limited time mode and sunsetted Arenas.
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