Maxis and others appear hit by 400-strong layoff wave
Apparently the cliché "when it rains, it pours" also applies to corporate feculence. In addition to shutting down storied RPG makers BioWare, EA are reportedly cutting staff at The Sims developers Maxis, as well as Skate studio Full Circle and Battlefield 6 co-devs Ripple Effect.
EA's internal announcement - first made public by Bloomberg - allegedly declared that 400 staffers would be laid off. That greatly outnumbers the 50 or so that were working at BioWare, but the memo failed to specify which other studios would be affected. Vertical Slice have since reported that Maxis and Ripple Effect are among EA's targets, citing multiple LinkedIn posts by laid-off staff. Numerous Full Circle devs have also revealed their own redundancies.
Many of the affected are experienced staff who've been with their respective studios for years. Anna Huerta, Maxis' senior creative director for The Sims, shared that she was "impacted by today's restructuring," adding "I'm incredibly sad that I won't get to continue working alongside such talented people on projects we care so deeply about, but I'm looking forward to whatever comes next." Dylan Palmer, a Sims artist and art director who appears to have worked within EA since 2019, also posted that he was "unfortunately caught in the recent round of layoffs."
At Full Circle, who have already endured layoffs this year, John Epler - a seasonal creative director who'd previously spent 17 years at BioWare - confirmed the elimination of his role. As did senior designer David Milne, senior gameplay designer Jason Payne, software engineer Jessia Coan, and development director Megan Lengle. In a separate post, Epler also paid tribute to his former BioWare colleagues, writing: "I got to work with some incredibly talented people, and some incredibly talented teams. So to all of you who I crossed paths with over the years, whether we still talk regularly or haven't connected in a while, thank you. And I hope everyone's proud of what we did together."
Word of cuts at Ripple Effect, who've worked on Battlefield 6, Battlefield 2042, and the Battlefield Portal UGC platform, has also been corroborated by posts from character artist Corey Thomas, technical animator Juan Meza, and technical artist Turner Spring.
There's currently no suggestion that these studios, or their respective games, are being shuttered, cancelled, or otherwise treated like EA have treated BioWare and Mass Effect 5. Still, the money to pay off the billions of dollars in debt that the publisher took on, as part of its leveraged buyout by the the Public Investment Fund of execution enthusiasts Saudi Arabia, has to come from somewhere; EA have evidently decided that somewhere is their employees' livelihoods.