LogInRespawn alone has terminated around 100 employees.
Electronic Arts and its subsidiary Respawn Entertainment, known for Apex Legends, Titanfall, and the Star Wars Jedi series, have become the latest major AAA studios to enact mass layoffs to improve their financial situation, cutting roughly 300 to 400 jobs, including around 100 positions at Respawn alone.
Respawn
As reported by Jason Schreier, citing an anonymous source familiar with the layoffs, up to 400 EA employees have been let go as part of this round, accounting for roughly 2.5-3% of the company's 13,700-strong workforce.
In a follow-up statement, EA spokesman Justin Higgs confirmed the layoffs, saying, "As part of our continued focus on our long-term strategic priorities, we've made select changes within our organization that more effectively aligns teams and allocates resources in service of driving future growth."
As if that wasn't enough, percentage-wise, the layoffs hit Respawn significantly harder than EA as a whole. According to the studio's official LinkedIn page, Respawn had between 500 and 1,000 employees before the cuts, so losing 100 amounts to a 10-20% reduction in staff.
Among the confirmed developers impacted by the layoffs are Respawn's Development Director Lauren Kamieniecki, Principal Writer Kevin Lee, Dialogue Editor Francis Lee, Animation Director Richard Pince, Senior Animator Guilherme Paiva, Level Designer Aaron Stump, Senior Character Artist Iouri Rybalka, and Senior Environment Artist Giovanni Martinez.
Shortly before Schreier's report and EA's subsequent confirmation of the layoffs, Respawn also released a statement of its own, announcing the cancellation of two unannounced games that were in early development – including the long-rumored extraction shooter set in the Titanfall universe, codenamed R7, whose existence had previously been speculated based on EA job postings. As of right now, it's unclear whether one of the two canceled games is the "incubation project" Respawn shut down back in March, or if the total number of unannounced projects the studio has scrapped has now reached three.
Unfortunately, as of now, EA has not linked the job cuts to the failure of any specific project or projects. That said, back in January, the company released preliminary results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2025, lowering its net bookings forecast for the year and attributing the drop to a slowdown in "Global Football" games' performance during Q3 FY2025, giving us one potential reason for the mass firings.
Adding to the company's struggles is the total fiasco that was BioWare's Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which, according to EA, sold only about 1.5 million copies in its first two months – nearly 50% below expectations. This underperformance ultimately led to layoffs of the game's writers and producers, which BioWare framed as part of a broader "restructuring" effort, while the lowered net bookings expectations caused EA's stock to drop to its lowest point in nearly two years.
Electronic Arts' Q4 and FY2025 financial report is expected to arrive sometime in early May, and hopefully it will provide more insight into why the mass layoffs were deemed necessary.
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