More than 200 quality assurance testers at Electronic Arts’ Baton Rouge, LA office were abruptly laid off during a surprise Zoom call Tuesday, according to three sources familiar with the meeting. Kotaku. Mostly worked on Apex Legendsthe popular publisher battle royale developed by Respawn Entertainment.
Some current and former testers started sharing the news on Twitter earlier today. “EA just launched the entire Baton Rouge studio, which is basically the entire Apex Legends QA crew,” single wrote which goes by TopMarx420. Three more employees have now been laid off, he said Kotaku that all testers were laid off on site, although some had just finished their night shifts earlier in the day.
Quality Assurance testers were invited to a mandatory unscheduled Zoom meeting at 8am Cairo time today with Magnit Global, their contracting agency, and encouraged to join from their smartphone or PC. According to three sources, who wished to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the press, management at the Baton Rouge studio laid off the entire test crew.
This news seemed to come as a shock not only to those left out, but also to the full-time supervisors who weren’t told in advance or given time to prepare. It appears that those affected were allowed to collect their personal belongings from the office only under the supervision of security. They will be given 60 days of dismissal, the sources said, although that would not cover the length of many people’s contracts.
while the Baton Rouge office I previously provided QA support for many different games published by EA, and I’m starting to help out Apex Legends ahead of its sudden launch in 2019. Given the experience and training the Baton Rouge team has gained over the past several years, some current and former testers worry that this sudden shift in operations could affect test quality in the near future.
These layoffs are coming A month later EA also canceled it the Apex Legends Separate for mobile, plus it’s under development battlefield mobile game. The studio working on the latter, Industrial Games, which EA bought in 2018, has shut down as a result. Last year, he was publisher FIFA And Madden also Customer service teams in Austin, TX have significantly reduced. like Kotaku At that time, it was outsourced to vendors in Europe and India.
EA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Update 2/28/2023 2:10 PM ET: Additional context from Twitter added.
Update 2/28/23 1:01 PM ET: More information has been added about the number of employees affected and how they were contracted.
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