EA lays off around 350 people

Electronic Arts is laying off 350 people across its marketing, publishing and operations teams, as well as reducing its presence in Japan and Russia. CEO Andrew Wilson announced the layoffs today.

Wilson said that the publisher was taking "important steps as a company to address our challenges and prepare for the opportunities ahead." Unfortunately, those changes will "impact about 350 roles", which means 350 people will be laid off. The full statement is below.

Today we took some important steps as a company to address our challenges and prepare for the opportunities ahead. As we look across a changing world around us, it’s clear that we must change with it. We’re making deliberate moves to better deliver on our commitments, refine our organization and meet the needs of our players. As part of this, we have made changes to our marketing and publishing organization, our operations teams, and we are ramping down our current presence in Japan and Russia as we focus on different ways to serve our players in those markets. In addition to organizational changes, we are deeply focused on increasing quality in our games and services. Great games will continue to be at the core of everything we do, and we are thinking differently about how to amaze and inspire our players.

This is a difficult day. The changes we’re making today will impact about 350 roles in our 9,000-person company. These are important but very hard decisions, and we do not take them lightly. We are friends and colleagues at EA, we appreciate and value everyone’s contributions, and we are doing everything we can to ensure we are looking after our people to help them through this period to find their next opportunity. This is our top priority.

Earlier this year, Activision Blizzard let go of hundreds of employees, ArenaNet laid off an unknown number of people, and Telltale closed its doors for good in November. It's an unpleasant and uncertain time.