Electronic Arts continues to shuffle along but is forced to trim the fat with layoffs allegedly hitting hundreds of employees.
The news comes just two weeks after it was voted America's Worst Company for the second year in a row by Consumerist readers.
The layoffs were confirmed Thursday on EA’s corporate blog.
“In recent weeks, EA has aligned all elements of its organizational structure behind priorities in new technologies and mobile. This has led to some difficult decisions to reduce the workforce in some locations,” the company said on its blog.
Just this month, EA shut down Playfish, its social gaming division with layoffs carrying over to EA Mobile. Playfish was bought in 2009 and all games being developed were effectively cancelled.
PopCap Vancouver and Quicklime were also shut down, the latter of which was only established last January. EA Partners, where EA publishes games from developers outside the company, reportedly took a large brunt of the layoffs.
“We are extremely grateful for the contributions made by each of our employees – those that are leaving EA will be missed by their colleagues and friends,” the blog post continued. “These are hard but essential changes as we focus on delivering great games and showing players around the world why to spend their time with us.”
EA won, or lost, depending on how you look at it, the Consumerist poll for Worst Company in America with a landslide victory/defeat. It took 78 percent of the votes.
EA’s COO Peter Moore sent out an apology before the final votes of the poll came in, titled “We Can Do Better." He ended it with “The tallest trees catch the most wind. At EA we remain proud and unbowed.”
CEO John Riccitiello resigned in March and warned that the fourth quarter fiscal reports would be lower than many expected. That number will come out May 7.
Investors, however, remain positive about the company, noting that it is up 23 percent.
If EA can keep its investors optimistic and figure out a way to turn around the public's opinion of the company, these layoffs could be forgotten.
But tall trees catch the most wind.
