EA lays off hundreds of game testers

Over 200 quality assurance testers who worked on games like Apex Legends at EA have reportedly been laid off over a Zoom call.

EA has reportedly laid off over 200 quality assurance testers who were working on Apex Legends at its Baton Rouge, Louisiana offices.

Kotaku has reported that the employees were laid off in a Zoom call with their contracting agency on February 28, with some now former employees reporting that the entire QA team had been disbanded. Affected employees are said to be receiving 60 days of severance pay as compensation.

The Zoom call which resulted in the lay-offs was reportedly unscheduled, taking place at 8am with the contracting agency in charge of QA testing, Magnit Global. Many games companies use external contractor companies like Magnit to hire for QA staff, and such roles are often transitory with little opportunity for progression.

Apex Legends has become massively popular, particularly in Japan and the US. Picture: Respawn Entertainment

The Baton Rouge office has been assisting with quality assurance testers on Apex Legends since before 2019, when it started helping to get the now popular battle royale game ready for its incredible debut. Testers were able to get experience working on the game since then, and players are concerned that their removal from the game might be felt in future updates to the game.

EA told Kotaku that the move was “part of [its] ongoing global strategy”, as it attempts to diversify its QA testing team for Apex Legends, distributing QA across other studios rather than having it concentrated solely in Baton Rouge.

“Our global team, inclusive of remote playtesters across the US, enables us to increase the hours per week we’re able to test and optimize the game and reflects a commitment to understand and better serve our growing community around the world,” EA told Kotaku.

It comes as the company rolls out a range of cost-saving measures after a difficult global financial environment. EA shut down development on two mobile games earlier this year, cancelling an upcoming Batltefield mobile game and shuttering Apex Legends Mobile.

Apex Legends Mobile was recently announced to be shutting down. Picture: EA

The latter game was said to be shut down due to increasing concerns about the quality of updates, with EA saying that Apex Legends Mobile began to “fall short of the bar for quality, quantity, and cadence”.

EA also reportedly cancelled a new Titanfall game, which would have been set in the same universe as Apex Legends. The game was set to be a single-player experience, and would have followed up the previous two games in the series.

Written by Oliver Brandt on behalf of GLHF.