Over 100 quality assurance testers at Electronic Arts’ office in Baton Rouge, LA, were abruptly fired during a surprise Zoom call Tuesday, according to three sources familiar with the meeting my city. They mostly worked on Apex Legendsthe publisher’s hit battle royale developed by Respawn Entertainment.
QA testers, all on contractors, were invited to an unscheduled mandatory Zoom meeting today at 8am CT and encouraged to attend via their personal smartphone or computer. Management at the Baton Rouge studio fired all testing staff, according to three sources, who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak to the press.
This news apparently came as a shock not only to those who were fired, but also to full-time supervisors who were not informed in advance or had time to prepare. Those affected were apparently only allowed to collect personal items from the office under the supervision of security forces. They’ll get a 60-day settlement, although that doesn’t cover the length of many people’s contracts, sources said.
While Baton Rouge office had previously provided QA support for many different games published by EA, it has mainly focused on that in recent years Apex Legends following its debut in 2019. Some current and former testers there worry that this abrupt shift in operations could affect the quality of testing in the near future, given the experience and training the Baton Rouge team has built up over the past few years.
Those layoffs are coming a month after EA also quit The Apex Legends mobile spin-off as well as a company in development battlefield mobile game. The studio that worked on the latter, Industrial Toys, which was bought by EA in 2018, subsequently closed. In the past year, the publisher of FIFA And Driving me crazy Also has significantly reduced its customer service teams in Austin, TX. As my city reported at the time that the work, which included helping players with broken microtransactions and regaining control of hacked accounts, was outsourced to providers in Europe and India.
EA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
