Electronic Arts Cuts Jobs at Montreal Studio

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Electronic Arts is going through another round of job cuts, this time laying off over half of the staff of its Montreal Studio, affecting 170 workers. The office is to remain open with reduced staffing.

EA has been restructuring its business to take advantage of new gaming platforms. Last year its PopCap unit laid off about 50 people in its North American office, after a year of hiring aggressively
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Best of luck to the people who are going to be searching for work.

EA looks like its blaming the mobile market for a loss of revenue though and putting up blinders over the negative press hurting game sales. Perhaps they're right to ignore the publicity though. They do have sales numbers in-hand and outsiders like us are left to speculate rather than actually perform informed market analysis. I do think they'd be doing better if they hadn't moved out of Steam and had limited the always on aspects of some of their recent releases like D3 and SC5.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
Best of luck to the people who are going to be searching for work.

EA looks like its blaming the mobile market for a loss of revenue though and putting up blinders over the negative press hurting game sales. Perhaps they're right to ignore the publicity though. They do have sales numbers in-hand and outsiders like us are left to speculate rather than actually perform informed market analysis. I do think they'd be doing better if they hadn't moved out of Steam and had limited the always on aspects of some of their recent releases like D3 and SC5.
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Canadian labor is among the most expensive in the world. The pay is not great but the federal re-gifting program (aka tax and spend particularly payroll taxes) makes it so. The weak Canadian dollar offset this. But since they've done the right thing and controlled their deficit relative to everyone else, their dollar is significantly stronger. Sounds to me they may have cut just to cut and restructuring had little to do with it.
 
Here i thought buying all those slim jims would keep EA employees in work. Jokes aside, i know what it feels like and i wish those employees the best of luck.
 
jpm100 said:
Canadian labor is among the most expensive in the world.
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Actually, companies only look at risk-adjusted labor prices (taking into account various government/political risks). And, when risk adjusted and factoring in the very high level of general education present in Canada, it's among the most attractive places to do business!
 
do not worry for them , there are better employer looking for game dev/design/art or whatever EA are laying off in montreal. Tons of games studios in the province of quebec.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
Best of luck to the people who are going to be searching for work.

EA looks like its blaming the mobile market for a loss of revenue though and putting up blinders over the negative press hurting game sales.
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Please show me your sources backing this negative press affecting game sales.
 
jpm100 said:
Canadian labor is among the most expensive in the world. The pay is not great but the federal re-gifting program (aka tax and spend particularly payroll taxes) makes it so. The weak Canadian dollar offset this. But since they've done the right thing and controlled their deficit relative to everyone else, their dollar is significantly stronger. Sounds to me they may have cut just to cut and restructuring had little to do with it.
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Or maybe the CEO just wants a raise. :D
 
I feel for those losing their jobs, but it's the guys at the top that really need to go. Those guys are EA's worst enemy.
 
That's_Corporate said:
Actually, companies only look at risk-adjusted labor prices (taking into account various government/political risks). And, when risk adjusted and factoring in the very high level of general education present in Canada, it's among the most attractive places to do business!
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Dream on.
 
friedchicken said:
There is no point quoting the word *speculate* since that is all you are doing.
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You're being clueless on purpose. *headpats* It's okay. I don't mind and I'll argue with you later when I'm feeling more up to having a pointless discussion that started with intentionally missing a point to nitpick over semantics and dove into some grand debate about the state of a certain company's financial affairs.

Next time though, we can both go into my Google Company Candy Van to *ahem* talk things through at length.
 
So I guess that means you have nothing to add of value to the discussion. It sounds like you enjoy the sound of your own voice, rather than give any real information. I was asking for clarity, and you respond with immaturity.

Enjoy yourself.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
Best of luck to the people who are going to be searching for work.

EA looks like its blaming the mobile market for a loss of revenue though and putting up blinders over the negative press hurting game sales. Perhaps they're right to ignore the publicity though. They do have sales numbers in-hand and outsiders like us are left to speculate rather than actually perform informed market analysis. I do think they'd be doing better if they hadn't moved out of Steam and had limited the always on aspects of some of their recent releases like D3 and SC5.
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D3 and SC5 are two entirely different companies.
 
You'd think they would need more staff to take advantage of new gaming platforms :p
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
You're being clueless on purpose. *headpats* It's okay. I don't mind and I'll argue with you later when I'm feeling more up to having a pointless discussion that started with intentionally missing a point to nitpick over semantics and dove into some grand debate about the state of a certain company's financial affairs.
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Told.

But D3 was ActiBlizz so you screwed up on the original post.
 
jpm100 said:
Canadian labor is among the most expensive in the world. The pay is not great but the federal re-gifting program (aka tax and spend particularly payroll taxes) makes it so. The weak Canadian dollar offset this. But since they've done the right thing and controlled their deficit relative to everyone else, their dollar is significantly stronger. Sounds to me they may have cut just to cut and restructuring had little to do with it.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's about pesumed tax stuff more than the Canadian dollar going from 0,65 USD to parity over the past decade. This pretty much doubled the cost of anything Canadian as transactions were conducted in USD. Hell, playing online since 1998 and working in a hotel I was often teased about Canadian money. I remember an American tourist in 2005 showing me a Canadian bill saying it was only paper. Many Ameicans still don't seem to realize that last I travelled to the US, I got more in USD than I had in CAD even with the exchange fee.
 
The reason there is an EA Montreal and EA Vancouver is they are using the large government tax subsidies to the video game industry to pay a large chunk of the employee salaries. This makes operating the studio cheaper than having the studio located in the US.
 
Guess the provincial government money is running out... It sucks.

With a lot of their work being on contract, EA has trained a lot of people though...
 
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