After months of rumours, EA has finally put an end to the speculation. 28 years after the launch of its first FIFA game, the publisher publishes the famous four letters for its own license: EA Sports FC.
A decision driven by the exponential cost of using the FIFA name, estimated at $2.5 billion over the next decade. All for World Cup use only. With this historic divorce, Electronic Arts should make big savings, and yet.
Hundreds of employees laid off
This separation is inevitably accompanied by some internal changes and, unfortunately, starts painfully for a hundred employees. my box reported on May 19, 2022 that EA will lay off up to 100 employees at its Austin, Texas subsidiary. Majority of them take care of customer service for FIFA 22 and some other titles.
« We are constantly evolving and improving our support model to provide better experiences for our fans. Joel Knutson, EA’s vice president of customer experience, explained in an email to employees. “ For less complexity and to improve our efficiency, flexibility and scalability
EA assures that it has nothing to do with the departure from FIFA
According to Kotaku, the move comes after numerous complaints from EA Austin and Galway about insufficient annual pay rises. They would be around ten cents an hour, although the publisher is in good financial shape thanks to gaming services such as FIFA.
« These changes are not related to any of our franchises and are not related to our EA SPORTS FC announcement from last week. says an EA representative to Kotaku. The spokesperson also states that ten new positions have been created to manage mobile game customer service. He calls on the hundred employees affected by the dismissal to apply.