Layoffs are nothing new in the video game industry, but the past few months have been dire in that department. EA’s Australian studio Firemonkeys is the latest impacted by large layoffs, with up to two-thirds of the developers’ staff on the chopping block.
As reported by Kotaku AU, the Melbourne-based studio currently provides live services for three games: Real Racing 3, The Sims FreePlay, and Need for Speed: No Limits. An EA spokesperson told Kotaku AU earlier this month that the publisher is “making some changes to the structure of Firemonkeys Studio, allowing teams there to focus on supporting live services for The Sims FreePlay.” This is apparently a euphemistic way of announcing that the staff who maintain the two racing titles will be made redundant or shifted to other projects.
Service for those two games will be moved to Slingshot, another EA-owned studio located in India. These layoffs also resulted in several cancelled projects, including Real Racing 4, which has been canned and brought back to life numerous times by Firemonkeys. In the report, anonymous sources say that the racing games were “performing well” and that the mood within the studio is “f**king grim.” GameSpot has reached out to EA for further comment.
Back in March, EA’s CEO Andrew Wilson shared a business update to the company’s employees, stating in part that EA was “moving away from projects that do not contribute to our strategy, reviewing our real estate footprint, and restructuring some of our teams. These decisions are expected to impact approximately six percent of our company’s workforce.” It would seem that a large portion of Firemonkeys staff fall into that six percent bracket.
Other major studios hit by layoffs in the past few weeks include Company of Heroes developer Relic Entertainment and XCOM developer Firaxis Games.
The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors.
GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.
