Over 200 high quality assurance testers at Digital Arts’ Baton Rouge, LA workplace have been abruptly laid off throughout a shock Zoom name on Tuesday, three sources accustomed to the assembly inform Kotaku. They labored predominantly on Apex Legends, the writer’s hit battle royale developed by Respawn Leisure.
QA testers have been invited to an unscheduled obligatory Zoom assembly at 8 a.m. CT immediately with Magnit World, their contracting company, and inspired to hitch from their private smartphone or pc. In line with three sources, who wished to stay nameless as a result of they weren’t approved to talk to press, administration on the Baton Rouge studio laid off all the testing workers.
This information apparently got here as a shock not solely to these let go, but in addition full-time supervisors who weren’t informed prematurely or given time to organize. These impacted have been apparently allowed to gather private belongings from the workplace solely beneath the supervision of safety. They are going to be offered 60 days severance, although that received’t cowl the size of many individuals’s contracts, sources stated.
Whereas the Baton Rouge workplace beforehand offered QA assist for a lot of completely different EA-published video games, it started helping with Apex Legends previous to its shock launch in 2019. Some present and former testers there fear this abrupt shift in operations might impression the standard of testing within the close to future, given the expertise and coaching the Baton Rouge crew had constructed up over the past a number of years.
These layoffs come a month after EA additionally cancelled the Apex Legends cell spin-off, in addition to an in-development Battlefield cell sport. The studio engaged on the latter, Industrial Toys, which was bought by EA in 2018, was shuttered consequently. Final 12 months, the writer of FIFA and Madden additionally considerably slashed its customer support groups in Austin, TX. As Kotaku reported on the time, that work, which included serving to gamers with busted microtransactions and wresting again management of hacked accounts, was outsourced to distributors in Europe and India.
EA didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Replace 2/28/23 1:01 p.m. ET: Added extra data about variety of workers affected and the way they have been contracted.