EA "Reducing Roles" at Codemasters - Talent Being Redeployed Across Dev Studios

[T0@st]

Not long after announcing an "end of the road" for World Rally Championship (WRC) franchise development, Electronic Arts (EA) reportedly implemented an unspecified number of layoffs at Codemasters. This long-running British racing game specialist became a fully EA-owned property just over five years ago. Since then, the studio continued work on the F1 franchise—in addition, teams also branched off into the making of well-known EA racing IPs: Grid and WRC. On forums and social media, (non-Codemasters) EA staffers indicated that colleagues had lost their jobs. Video Games Chronicle reached out to the publisher, for comment on last week's conditions. On April 29, the American video game company announced the cutting of hundreds of roles, and the cancelation of unannounced projects.

In a statement issued to VGC, an EA spokesperson explained: "as a business, we are constantly evolving to meet the growing needs of our players and driving greater focus across our portfolio. This has led us to look at reducing some roles, while we redeploy as many as possible against our strategic priorities." As reported earlier this year, the company tends to "reshuffle" its development staff following the completion of projects. It is not clear how much of the internal setup at Codemasters has been re-jigged, but an EA Racing franchise social media manager provided a little bit of insight. In a past weekend forum post, they posited that: "there's a lot of talent up for grabs now—the audio and vehicle art teams were some of the best in the business; and any game with cars in it should tap them up." Criterion could be an ideal location for transfers, but this Surrey, UK-based studio's focus has been redirected to non-racing IPs.



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[Vayra86]

Five years and there's the axe.

I seriously do not understand how any semblance of professional talent wants to keep working for this shithole. Codemaster devs are better off now. Go do something else, it was long overdue anyway.

Also I can't imagine ANY dev pouring 'heart and soul' into an EA product, knowing there might be a banhammer floating over your head at any given time. What an utterly shitty employer to work for. You had fun in your team... ahaha sucks to be you, you're out, because we found a way to add another zero to our CEOs and shareholders paycheck.

'Constantly evolving' ... with no respect for anything other than cash.

 

[Onasi]

Step 1: Go publicly traded.
Step 2: Your board is now consisting of soulless MBAs.
Step 3: Said board approves selling out to a corpo because money.
Step 4: The corpo fucks you over when it decides to “optimize”. <= Codemasters is here now.
Step 5: Your studio is shut down after failing to meet impossible milestones or just for cost cutting.

EVERY. FUCKING. TIME.
Game developers are not learning animals. Always keep independence, try to stay private and NEVER enter deals with publishers for anything else than distribution.

 

[Vayra86]

EVERY. FUCKING. TIME.
Game developers are not learning animals. Always keep independence, try to stay private and NEVER enter deals with publishers for anything else than distribution.

This applies to a lot of people though in a lot of occupations, and as citizens... consumers... Most of the time, we just don't want to believe the world's as shitty as it is. We prefer to live in denial until it's proven. I do hope people get wiser, and fast, on every level. Don't take shit from anyone, stand up for your rights and for what you think is ethical behaviour. It is sorely needed.

 

[mcloughj]

I'm never gonna get that Dizzy remake that I've been waiting 40 years for.

 

[blinnbanir]

The quality of BG3 should have shown that American Corporate politics has no place in Gaming. Nintendo have been rehashing their franchises for 40 years but are still successful as another example. Just like Intel 4 Cores people were conditioned to think that AAA was better when all it meant was some of those GPU features actually got applied. Like how even Jedi Survivor supports Multi GPU.

 

[theglaze]

I've only known Codemasters to be mediocre with its racing games.
An unwillingness to geek out and make the games more detailed and complex.
Look what they did with Colin McRae Rally...

 

[Darkholm]

There is a special circle in Hell for lawyers and EA CEOs.

 

[umeng2002]

And EA kills another one.

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

Step 1: Go publicly traded.
Step 2: Your board is now consisting of soulless MBAs.
Step 3: Said board approves selling out to a corpo because money.
Step 4: The corpo fucks you over when it decides to “optimize”. <= Codemasters is here now.
Step 5: Your studio is shut down after failing to meet impossible milestones or just for cost cutting.

EVERY. FUCKING. TIME.
Game developers are not learning animals. Always keep independence, try to stay private and NEVER enter deals with publishers for anything else than distribution.

Game developers exist to make money. For many of them selling out is the only chance they will have to get a real paycheck. Getting paid matters more than anything. Getting paid is much better than struggling to satisfy the whiniest consumers on earth, gamers.

 

[evernessince]

Game developers exist to make money. For many of them selling out is the only chance they will have to get a real paycheck. Getting paid matters more than anything. Getting paid is much better than struggling to satisfy the whiniest consumers on earth, gamers.

As Sven from Larian said, making a good game is first and foremost important. The money will follow.

Not every dev is in it for the money, in fact nearly every good game had a passionate team behind it. Yes they needed money to make the game but it wasn't why they were doing it, it was merely a means to an end.

Companies with money as the end goal and not just the means invariably produce worse games.

 

[Onasi]

Game developers exist to make money. For many of them selling out is the only chance they will have to get a real paycheck. Getting paid matters more than anything. Getting paid is much better than struggling to satisfy the whiniest consumers on earth, gamers.

You don’t get into gamedev to make money if you are remotely serious about making said money. Any specialist in the relevant field (if they are remotely good) could find a job that pays better in a less fucked up industry, which gamedev famously is. Programmers, artists (3D and 2D), animators, sound guys, even writers - all can find more profitable avenues of work. Hell, even pure “game designers”, however nebulous a concept, can have better pay in tabletop or PnP games, famously. In the end, the massive money involved in the industry is very top heavy and are mostly distributed between execs and shareholders. People actually making games have notoriously overall shit paychecks and poor job security. So no, your hate boner for gamers aside (cute gimmick, but a tad one note), if you are in this business you are by default driven by passion, not pure rational financial calculus. And the industry as a whole was mostly built up by said “whiny gamers” who follow their passion for their hobby to work in it.

 

[AusWolf]

Step 1: Go publicly traded.
Step 2: Your board is now consisting of soulless MBAs.
Step 3: Said board approves selling out to a corpo because money.
Step 4: The corpo fucks you over when it decides to “optimize”. <= Codemasters is here now.
Step 5: Your studio is shut down after failing to meet impossible milestones or just for cost cutting.

EVERY. FUCKING. TIME.
Game developers are not learning animals. Always keep independence, try to stay private and NEVER enter deals with publishers for anything else than distribution.

It's called short-term thinking. The big wig studio flashes some cash in front of you and you go aaaahh! This is how the world's wealth gets consolidated, not only in the gaming industry.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

R.I.P Codemasters

 

[ymdhis]

I see their CEOs needed another 50million $ bonus this year.

I'm never gonna get that Dizzy remake that I've been waiting 40 years for.

Yeah that was my first idea too upon hearing Codemasters. I still have the tape box set.

 

[Hakker]

Five years and there's the axe.

I seriously do not understand how any semblance of professional talent wants to keep working for this shithole. Codemaster devs are better off now. Go do something else, it was long overdue anyway.

Also I can't imagine ANY dev pouring 'heart and soul' into an EA product, knowing there might be a banhammer floating over your head at any given time. What an utterly shitty employer to work for. You had fun in your team... ahaha sucks to be you, you're out, because we found a way to add another zero to our CEOs and shareholders paycheck.

'Constantly evolving' ... with no respect for anything other than cash.

It's not as if Codemasters was such a good place as well. many titles had literally 0 support after launch. Hospital Tycoon for instance had literally game breaking bugs and crashes to desktop and they never even made a patch. They just pushed the devs of that title to a new game. Basically if it wasn't a racing game it had just about 0 support at Codemasters.

 

[Legacy-ZA]

Well, they did a FAFO, we will see if they live. The Pendulums swing.

 

[Denver]

Game studios should be banned from being publicly traded. This always results in degradation of the beta product they try to shove down our throats.

 

[AusWolf]

Game studios should be banned from being publicly traded. This always results in degradation of the beta product they try to shove down our throats.

Ultimately, it's their own choice, they've got no one else to blame. If you sell your soul company to EA/Ubisoft, you'll get what's coming for you. Short-term profits for long-term doom.