Oh Noes: Further Fallout From EA’s Layoffs

Electronic Arts announced plans to lay off around 1,500 people by the end of March 2010, and that was bad.  The company chalked up the drastic measure as a cost cutting technique.  Human sadness aside, gamers should be worried about the many video games being canceled, or at least shelved for the foreseeable future.  It remains unclear as to which new IPs or underperforming franchises will see the axe as of now, but rumors have circulated that a pair of internal developers are taking it on the chin.

Numerous sources are claiming that Mythic Entertainment, creator of Warhammer Online and other MMOGs, and the development team at EA LA responsible for Command & Conquer 4 are receiving a the most pink slips, percentage wise.  Mythic Entertainment has “lost about 40% of the company” which was “responsible for 90% of the content.” The move has reportedly placed WAR into “‘maintenance mode.’”

Executive producer Jeff Hickman addressed the rumor in his open letter to the community.  The short of it is that Mythic remains steadfast in the struggle “to deliver the content and service that keeps you playing.”  It’ll certainly be a struggle with 40% of the staff at home.

Think Mythic had it bad?  New reports indicate that EA LA’s C&C4 team is in shambles as well, and will remain that way until the game has shipped.  At that point, it’s adios to everyone.

“Pete Larsen, Jason bender, Sam Bass, Raj Joshi are definitely gone. Mike Glosecki and Amer Ajami are rumoured [sic] to be gone as well, and Apoc has supposedly been reassigned and the support-oriented ‘Live Team’ been eliminated. According to him, the C&C4 single-player campaign is complete, which would explain how so many EALA RTS bigwigs (Lead this, Senior that) could be let go without cancelling [sic] the game completely.”

Ouch, seems that the brass was/is being eliminated first.