Rumor: EA cuts targeting Maxis, Pandemic, C&C staff

EA have clearly been playing command & conquer - everybody knows it's a good strategy to tell your employees they're gonna get fired before they finish working on a game.

EA or any other company doesn't exist for you the consumer or the employees...they exist for the shareholders. It really is quite simple.

Why don't publishers just sell off their assets these days, surely that would be the more profitable avenue rather than just shutting shop?

I feel horrible for those employees getting cut, but what I just don't understand is why anyone voluntarily works for EA to begin with. (Well, maybe in this job market, but under normal conditions - I just don't get it).

Yes, they make AAA titles which looks good on a resume, but the between the (reforming) sweatshop mentality and soulless sequel rehashes they put out, the work cannot be rewarding. It seems like every time they do these big cuts it is to their more creative divisions.

Their working conditions are infamous going all the way back to EA_spouse of 2004, and an article on Kotaku pointed out that this purge cycle happens every year right after crunch time for the Christmas release (almost as if they don't like paying for the recovery time between projects).

Interestingly enough, the infamous EA spouse LiveJournal entry was posted exactly five years ago, today.

Does no one buy RTS games any more? First Halo wars, now C&C. And sad about Pandemic, they were good developers. I am afraid that we will end up with a few mega-titles, GTA, CoD, churning the same stuff again and again, and other developers withering away. mercenaries sold 2m but even that wasnt enough it seems. And difficult though it may seem, bioware is at risk too - Mass Effect sold just 2-2.5m, and would have cost 40-50m to develop for such a massive complex game, which means they would have lost money even after PC sales.

Aside from the fact that we will be losing a bunch of great titles, my concern about this move is that EA is at risk of becoming short sighted. Without supporting new IP's, I feel that they risk becoming insignificant in the industry over time.

How long can you run a company off of sequels? Doesn't anyone else see this?

I've never really played that series before, but that screenshot looks fun.

RTS games need an HD Wii bad. Pointing and Clicking is only good in HD

I must be getting old. I still feel Maxis and Westwood are big players in PC gaming.

This makes me sad ;_;

Hmm.. And how many executives are losing their jobs? What? None? They're getting bonuses? Yep, that sounds about right.

And the sad thing is they'll want to hire new people that have loads of experience for low pay. Then, there's people like me who wouldn't mind getting paid lower if we could just get a good dev job (I'm an artist) to start off with even if we didn't have any experience yet. Right now I'm working at a game company, but I'm not directly involved in the development b/c I don't have enough experience.