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Businesses Entertainment Games

EA's Profits Up, Workers Get Layoffs 436

Posted by Zonk from the they-know-PR dept.
Gamespot and GamesIndustry.biz has the news from yesterday's conference call where EA CEO Larry Probst reported higher earnings for his company in Q3, despite a small yearly decline. He also held forth on the future cost of next-gen games, which in his opinion will likely stay as high as $50 and could perhaps fetch more on retail shelves. Just before this story was to be published, Tim Butler wrote in with the news from 1Up.com that EA was laying off members of its LA studio. From the article: "According to sources close to the company, Electronic Arts is currently in the process of laying off between 50-70 team members from its minty-fresh new EA LA office. The teams affected worked on the poorly-recieved GoldenEye: Rogue Agent and the forthcoming Medal of Honor: Dogs of War FPS titles." Update: 01/27 06:34 GMT by Z : Update to the layoff article: "The first step is to rebalance the team. This has required us to let go 60 people -- from many different teams. There is no focus on any one team or any one class of individuals. It's a studio-wide thing to reset the business fundamentals and get the studio to the next level."
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EA's Profits Up, Workers Get Layoffs More

EA's Profits Up, Workers Get Layoffs

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  • Team Balancing ACT 2005 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fembots ( 753724 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @07:43PM (#11486446) Homepage
    If you had read the friendly article, you would have seen the update:

    After speaking to Neil Young, General Manager of the EA LA studio, it's now clear that the confirmed 60 layoffs are not heavily confined to one team or another, countering early rumors that the GoldenEye or Medal of Honor teams were specifically targerted -- countering the implication that the underperformance of certain games might have been the catalyst.

    Maybe EA is shaking its developers up for the foreseeable battle with TakeTwo?

    And it's undeniable that EA is in a good position to pull this kind of team-balancing stunt, because there are simply too many willing-to-work-25-hours-a-day multimedia graduates. If you come across an apple tree full of apples, you'll surely pick the best ones too.

    • Re:Team Balancing ACT 2005 (Score:4, Funny)

      by Antonymous Flower ( 848759 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @07:47PM (#11486478) Homepage
      there are simply too many willing-to-work-25-hours-a-day multimedia graduates

      So there really is life on Mars?
    • well layoffs is a sure way to get profits up. For the next few quarters at least, then you gotta pay the pipper. Of course the CEO will probably have graduated onto bigger and better things...

      You can find anybody to work for any amount you wish to pay. The "best ones" != the ones that work the longest hours. Someone once said if you can't get it done in 35 hours a week you are not qualified for the job. Insane job description notwithstanding.
      • Well, long time ago, people felt threatened by machines that were replacing manual labor, so they simply smashed and broke the machines.
        They probably weren't right. But...

        But it seems to me that perhaps a random lynching or two of scrooge-ish CEOs by angry ex-employees might deliver a potent message to any prospective pursuants of this squeeze-then-kill strategy. You know, make them think twice or somesuch... ;-)
        • But it seems to me that perhaps a random lynching or two of scrooge-ish CEOs by angry ex-employees might deliver a potent message ...

          I'm sure it would. Unfortunately, that message would almost surely be: ``Hire in India, so they can't reach you when you lay them off.''

          You think offshoring is popular _now_? Just wait.

    • If you come across an apple tree full of apples, you'll surely pick the best ones too.

      And then throw half of them in the trash? Oh, you mean they waited until after the game was done to realize these weren't the best candidates for the job? That's convenient. Why not just call it a temp job?
      • Why not just call it a temp job? I have two friends that work in the gaming industry (one does sound the other does character). Both have been laid off multiple times. Why? The major project they were on was done with and there were no new projects on the table, so they were laid off. The first time for both (they worked together at first) it was a small company so that was understandable.. but from my limited knowledge this seems to be the norm.

        • Re:Team Balancing ACT 2005 (Score:4, Insightful)

          by badasscat ( 563442 ) <basscadet75@NOspAm.yahoo.com> on Thursday January 27, 2005 @10:21AM (#11491625)
          Why not just call it a temp job? I have two friends that work in the gaming industry (one does sound the other does character). Both have been laid off multiple times. Why? The major project they were on was done with and there were no new projects on the table, so they were laid off. The first time for both (they worked together at first) it was a small company so that was understandable.. but from my limited knowledge this seems to be the norm.

          Well, this seems to be what the industry is moving towards, and it's honestly not such a bad thing.

          The film industry and in fact most creative industries operate on a project-to-project basis. You're hired for a specific project, you work like mad for six months, you make a year's worth of money during that time and then you're done. You then shop yourself around to other producers and try to get yourself attached to another project. Or, you take six months off and recharge.

          This makes most creative industries pretty cut-throat, but it has a couple of positive effects. First, it keeps creative professionals from being too overworked, which as we all know is a huge problem in the games industry. Right now, the industry operates like a project-based industry but with permanent employees, so the workers don't ever get that break when projects end. Second, it hopefully causes the cream of the crop to rise to the top, because it's sort of a Darwinian system. The strong survive, the weak can't get themselves attached to new projects and eventually find other work. Of course, it doesn't always work out that way in any creative industry - the most creative minds are not always great at networking, for one thing. But it does ensure at least a basic level of competence in the industry, which right now is lacking (I think we can all agree that the technical quality of games these days is really all over the map).

          If there really is a transition within the industry to become more like the film or other similar industries, then once it's complete I think workers will actually be better off. There will still be permanent workers and plenty of them, but, like the film industry, they will mainly be in marketing and administrative positions, which are often (though not always) both lower stress and higher paying than development or production jobs are today. The pay per project of developers will actually go up, because there will be an actual incentive for developers to recruit top talent for top projects, and the number of total hours worked per year for developers will go down - unless someone's a real coding rock star who's in high demand and chooses to simply move straight on from one tough project to the next.

          Again, plenty of industries already work like this and it makes more sense than asking poorly-paid, often untalented full-time employees for 24/7 devotion to the company. Weed the untalented out of the industry, pay the talented better and give them some more time off. If they've got the talent and some basic interview skills, they'll have no problem finding more work in such a system.
    • If you come across an apple tree full of apples, you'll surely pick the best ones too.

      Yes, because we can always blame our unethical decisions on somebody else. I'm particularly fond of the "if I don't do it, they'll find somebody who will" excuse that goes all the way to the very top.

      Truth is, you are responsible for your choices, how ever many apples there are on the tree.

    • Maybe EA is shaking its developers up for the foreseeable battle with TakeTwo?

      shmaybe..

      And it's undeniable that EA is in a good position to pull this kind of team-balancing stunt, because there are simply too many willing-to-work-25-hours-a-day multimedia graduates. If you come across an apple tree full of apples, you'll surely pick the best ones too.

      Maybe they're getting ready to ship development overseas, too, it's not beyond possibility, as we've seen all too much of in IT and Engineering.

      Why pay

  • If the game was bad (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @07:45PM (#11486461)
    shouldn't they be held responsible?

    Why should they be carried by better producing teams if they couldn't?

  • Oh no! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @07:48PM (#11486484)
    A business acting like a business! Boooooooo! Hissssssssss! Profits up and they fired people? Well, good god, only evil can be afoot. There's no other explination!

    • Re:Oh no! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bladesjester ( 774793 )
      Profits are up and they are firing people from teams that already work 70-80 hours a week, which will probably cause even more work for those that are still employed with them.

      I'd say that's pretty "evil"...

      • Re:Oh no! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by back_pages ( 600753 )
        I'd say that's pretty "evil"...

        And I'm sure the people in charge at EA feel really bad about it as they deposit bag after bag of money into the bank.

        I'd be shocked if the US doesn't lose 50% of its programming/development jobs over the next 15 years. There's virtually no reason to keep the majority of them here in the states except quality.. and quality is proving to be no reason at all. Of course, some will still survive, but The History Channel still finds a modern day blacksmith and put him on TV

    • Re:Oh no! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by readpunk ( 683053 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:13PM (#11486704) Journal
      This is such childish logic.

      Of course EA is acting like a business. I am upset about people getting fired in all positions when their company is making profits not because this doesn't benefit the hierarchy within the corporation, this is logical for those at the top who value strength in the stock market as well as long term profits for themselves.

      What sickens me is that we live in a world with an economic system where the most logical thing to do when your profits are up is to fire workers.

      Just because something is logical for those doing it, does not inherently make it "normal" in the sense that human beings are naturally inclined to do it, nor does it make ethical.

      • Re:Oh no! (Score:2, Insightful)

        by ScentCone ( 795499 )
        What sickens me is that we live in a world with an economic system where the most logical thing to do when your profits are up is to fire workers.

        You're completely missing the point, and probably have a really wrong-headed view of what makes an economy work, or at least what keeps people putting investment money into companies in the first place. EA wouldn't exist at all without its original and ongoing investors.

        What you're not getting is that the only reason EA's profits grow is because they consist

        • Re:Oh no! (Score:4, Insightful)

          by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @09:40PM (#11487475) Journal
          After mergers you have to lay people off, thats the sad fact. The big problem is when EA just buys companies for the rights to a game.

          Thats why people hate EA, they are putting people out of work just for the rights to videogames.

          Take your company public, EA could buy it out from you, and own everything you work for.

        • Thought experiment. (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Duhavid ( 677874 )
          You can have one of two companies:

          One has 100% "original and ongoing investors" and no workers.

          The other has 100% workers and no "original and ongoing investors".

          Which has a chance of succeeding?

          I ask this question to point out that the workers are very important to a company's operations. Moreso than the investors. ( note, investment is good, yada yada, etc, etc. but put it in perspective, workers *and* investors make the economy work ). EA also would not exist without it's workers.

        • Re:Oh no! (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Coryoth ( 254751 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @10:34PM (#11487911) Homepage Journal
          The reality, however, is that while hard decisions like this might be very good for the investors in the short term (and hence help boost investment) because of the boost in quarterly profits, in the long term EA is aquiring quite the reputation as a slave driver with no loyalty to people it employs. If EA develops too much of a reputation for that they won't get anywhere near the same employee pool to pick and choose from - the smart people will be staying away. Long term it is potentially gutting the company if they push it too far.

          And that, right there, is the big problem that causes so many people to complain about big corporations: They have come to favour short term quarterly profits over long term sustainable profits. If you look at most complaints, from environmental, to labour, to political, when you pare it down it is occuring because companies are considering their short term future but not bothering to look at the long term results.

          Jedidiah.

    • Re:Oh no! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jxyama ( 821091 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:20PM (#11486754)
      there are many companies that are "businesses" but don't act the way EA has. goldman sachs comes as one example of a very profittable company that has also been commended for its fair and dignified treatment of the workforce.

      not all businesses are alike. pursuing profits isn't mutually exclusive with treating its employees with respect.

      the way EA is doing business is one way, and it's their way of doing things. personally, i'd never work for or buy products from company that seems to show absolutely no compassion in its business practice or for its employees. that's my way of doing things in response to such companies. and i doubt that i'm alone.

      • well, with all the bad press going around, maybe we'll see EA having problems hiring. Maybe people will leave to find better jobs. If so, you're right, what they've done and are doing is bad for the company and themselves. Or maybe they'll still have people banging down the door to work there, despite knowing they will have poor pay and long hours. In that case, taken pragmatically, this would seem like a good thing for the company.

    • Re:Oh no! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by CAIMLAS ( 41445 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:35PM (#11486894)
      It's not a business operating as a business. It's a corporation acting as a corporation. Businesses look out for their employees, as they're valueable assets. Corporations don't give a fuck. They're big enough that they're visible and able to bring in the brightest/best/most.
    • The theory goes that when you do well, you get paid well because of it. At least, that's the theory, although it doesn't quite jive with the explanation I get for why CEOs make twenty times what I do and get raises whether or not the company does well.

      If companies have the rights of people, why shouldn't I expect them to behave as I am expected to? Perhaps that's the point - companies and their investors get the benefits of an entity with the rights of a person and which is exempt from the responsibilitie

  • This is Not a Layoff (Score:5, Interesting)

    by techsoldaten ( 309296 ) * on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @07:50PM (#11486501) Journal
    Don't look at this as a layoff.

    This is an invitation to enter the field of merchandising the games they built directly to consumers at the retail level. WalMart, Best Buy and Target are all hiring, and can use people knowledgable about the games themselves.

    Seriously, how much money does that company make from building these games? All the hard work, blood, sweat and tears that go into being an EA employee and this is all they have to give their developers. And you know their executives are going to receive higher bonuses this year for trimming the fat.

    I guess all we can say is thank you for the nedless hours of high-tech distraction your guys have provided us, at least the gaming community appreciates you.

    M
    • Hardware and software. More than feature movies.

  • Goldeneye: Rogue Agent (Score:4, Insightful)

    by KnowledgeFreak ( 528963 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @07:50PM (#11486508)
    I didn't hear that Rogue Agent did badly. I bought the thing and loved it.. yeah, it had some aspects that were obviously a knock off of halo, but some of it was innovative for an FPS, and parts of it were a hell of a lot of fun.
    • I can't stand what EA did with Goldeneye: Rogue Agent. They're whoring the name of a great game for no reason other than to make money.

      It's almost as bad as what happened with Napster (taking a famous name and rebranding it on something else for $$)

  • the person who should be fired for goldeneye.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by glenkim ( 412499 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @07:52PM (#11486520) Homepage
    I talked to a friend who was actually one of the game designers for the new Goldeneye game. When I found out he had worked on it, I told him that the game looked pretty crappy and he told me the reason. Apparently, the producer of the game wasn't happy with the initial draft of the game's script... so he went home and rewrote it. by himself.



    BOFHs writing games? Yeah right, I hope his ass was canned.

  • And the winner is... :-(

  • I'll say it right now (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bonch ( 38532 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @07:54PM (#11486538)
    EA is evil. EA represents the suit-and-tie, corporate-owned, mainstream conversion of the gaming industry. They represent cheesy CEOs coming over from other failed companies who are only getting into the game industry because they see massive annual revenues from this thing, not because they're into games. Merely ten years ago, we had a sort of Silver Age of gaming, from Doom to Descent to Command & Conquer to Myst to Simcity 2000 to...well, you were there. It all spanned multiple genres. Where is it now? The good games are far and few between. Now, it's the yearly update of the new Tony Hawk game, complete with skateboard fat clowns that spray graffiti, and the "underground racing" games where morons who think neon lights are a good investment tell each other how "sick" their "tricked out" cars are as obnoxious, over-compressed, repetitive rap music blasts while you race down wet, nighttime city streets. Because that's "underground!" Meanwhile, the PC industry purposely speeds itself up faster and faster to increase the yearly bullshit upgrade cycle. If you don't have a video card with two fans taking up two slots in your translucent, neon-lit PC case, your penis just isn't big enough to play the latest id Software game made up of approximately 90% pitch black darkness on-screen. Innovation? Fuck it, let's fuck up Deus Ex so we can get on the console in time while we destroy Fallout 3. After that, we'll suck the teat of the latest Microsoft DirectX release, focus-group tested with a new name ("DirectNext! Because it's the NEXT one!") guaranteed to generate 87% profit margins on new graphics card updates. And that blazing fast PC you custom-built last year? Fuck it, better ditch that because your goddamn RAM chips aren't operating at a fast enough speed to melt the paint off the wall and generate enough electromagnetic fields to shrivel the balls off your legs as you read the latest paid-for review in a dying game magazine.

    I'm bitter about today's PC gaming.
  • They don't call them the Evil Alliance for nothing.
  • Team size: ~100
    2004 profit (not revenue): $200m
    Hours worked per week: 60-70
    Bonus: $600 (in gift certificates, not cash)
    • Lately I've begun to see My-Job-Worse comments on slashdot where posters just make up bad stuff about their jobs to blend in with their peers. I saw a comment on how the posters company was even worse in abusing marketing buzzwords in response to a story about marketing jargon. The comment was promptly ripped off from a page on the GNAA website.

  • Sweatshop 2005 (Score:5, Funny)

    by j1bb3rj4bb3r ( 808677 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @07:56PM (#11486555)
    New from EA Games... Sweatshop 2005 where you start a 15 year career as a team manager putting out world class video games. You must keep your team happy-ish, while driving them to the brinks of insanity. New features include 'personal day approval' where you must decide whether letting your multimedia developer go to their mother's funeral is worth the slip in schedule. Transfer team members to other lower performing teams in order to maximize your cost/benefit ratio. Upgrade your staff with 'efficiency experts' for that extra paranoid boost of productivity. Move up the ranks of the corporate ladder while crushing those who stand in your way. Collect praise and bonuses for the slave labor of your subordinates.

    I'd play it.
    • In could do this as an expansion pack for the SIMS, import your favourite families and watch how they react to all the cool features you just mentioned. But they are affected by the detrimental challenges at work for the slaves family. You could watch how the house and car get reposessed and see the wife slashing her wrists in a mountain of bills.

  • You know (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cubicledrone ( 681598 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @07:57PM (#11486567)
    The cynical answer to this would be "no comment." So obvious is business' contempt for education and an honest day's work now that it becomes pointless to even discuss it.

    But each time anyone attempts to emphasize the fact that business has turned its back on just about everything except its quarterly earnings, we get "nobody owes you a living so get over it."

    The fact is, it is wrong to fire people like this. It is absolutely wrong. These companies are damaging, and in a lot of cases destroying the careers of people who work for a living. It isn't fair and it isn't right.

    EA has no problem investing millions and tens of millions to build colossal glittering corporate edifices where they can hold meetings about whom to fire this week. But on payday they claim costs are too high.

    W-4 employment is obsolete.

    • Re:You know (Score:2, Insightful)

      by nagora ( 177841 )
      It isn't fair and it isn't right.

      No, but it is capitalism. The problem is that the people capitalism works for are the people that can afford to buy the laws that they want, which make sure that capitalism works for them and not ordinary people who can't afford to do the same thing because capitalism doesn't wrok for them, so they don't have the money blah blah blah.

      As you pointed out, anyone that complains gets the old mantra of "nobody owes you a living", which ignores the fact that that is exactly the

  • Anyone else say "screw em"? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EZmagz ( 538905 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:05PM (#11486642) Homepage
    Here's my take (given that I haven't RTFA, it ain't worth much)...to hell with EA. Seriously. I'm not a huge gamer or console freak, so I don't spend a lot of money on games. Maybe 2 or 3 a year max, so it's not like my money matters in that much in the grand scheme of things.

    That being said, after reading all of the crap that EA has been putting their employees through, I refuse to buy a game from them anymore. The last sports game I bought was Tiger Woods Golf 2004 for my PS2, and that WILL be the last game I'll buy from EA. Period. I refuse to give my money to a company that gets away with the slave labor antics and rediculous headcutting that EA has graced us with. While all those 100-hour-a-week programmers get sent to unemployment, EA's CEO still gets his 7-figure salary and a fat bonus. And YES, I realize that my Old Navy jeans are made in China and my polo shirt was made in some third-world country. Exploitation goes on worldwide, and I've come to terms with it. This is just one battle that I choose to let affect my purchasing decisions.

    So basically EA, fuck you. I'll take my $100 a year that I would have spent on your products and go to one of the two or three remaining competitors left in console gaming. Or maybe I'll go buy some basement-made games like Uplink instead. Or maybe I'll just say screw you all and go buy used NES games, which still entertain me way more than your 'Sports Title $YEAR' titles ever will. Either way EA, you can kiss my money goodbye.

    • Tool of the media (Score:4, Insightful)

      by siskbc ( 598067 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @09:03PM (#11487146) Homepage
      That being said, after reading all of the crap that EA has been putting their employees through

      I don't want to have to defend EA here, but do we really know if they're worse than the rest of the industry? I'd never work for a company like that, but let's remember that this whole thing started from the blog of a wife of an EA programmer. Now we have slashdot posting everything they do. I'm not saying they *aren't* the antichrist, but let's actually consider first whether there's some manipulation or just plain shoddy reporting at fault too.

      • I don't want to have to defend EA here, but do we really know if they're worse than the rest of the industry?

        Yes, they are.

        Sure, sometimes a small studio might fall into similar work habits and patterns, especially if they are spiraling into debt or massively behind schedule. But it's not some kind of mistake that EA is evil towards its lowly developers - it is completely intentional and institutionalized, and it is done on a truly massive scale that very few other companies could match. EA is hugely pro

    • I refuse to give my money to a company that gets away with the slave labor antics and rediculous headcutting that EA has graced us with.

      I'd rather see people stop buying EA PC games because frankly, the overall quality of them just sucks. It took Battlefield 1942 around a years worth of patches before it hit what I would have called "release quality". Battlefield Vietnam, built on basically the same engine, was released on an EARLIER VERSION of the engine, missing many of the key features that BF1942 h

  • Medal of Honor, Call of Duty(activision) addons and expansions.
    Please DON'T make any more WW2 games until you got some truly new amazing technology to show. It has been done to death.
    If there only had been made one tenth of that in the Halflife universe, I'd be happy.
    Nothing wrong with making a game series, a interactive story, but I am sick and tired of WW2 weapons and storylines.

    Having all those expantions with little new gameplay does not help building a solid server base on the internet for multiplayer

    • Exactly. BF42 ... a great game. But when I look on the shelves and see what to me look like just clones everywhere I think "why bother ... I've had that experience already". Not fair on the developers of those other games but its just human nature. It seems to me, from my limited view, that EA makes just variants of a small set of game types, yeah they're well made and all but if I'm going to plonk down hard plastic for a game I don't want something like I already have. Do I intend to buy more EA? Well mayb

  • Prices (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ra5pu7in ( 603513 ) <ra5pu7in@gm a i l . com> on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:17PM (#11486734) Journal
    future cost of next-gen games, which in his opinion will likely stay as high as $50 and could perhaps fetch more on retail shelves.

    I can already tell you that if every next-gen EA game comes out on the shelves at a $50+ price point, I'll simply turn to other games (or, more slyly, wait until the games appear used - in which case EA gets no profit out of the resale). They may hold certain niches, but they don't own the market ... no matter what they have convinced themselves of or how many developers they buy out.

    • Re:Prices (Score:4, Interesting)

      by alphaseven ( 540122 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @09:14PM (#11487230)
      Midway is experimenting [gamespot.com] with lower prices, they lowered the upcoming game NARC from $50 to $20 recently, they're predicting they'll make it up on volume. Lower prices doesn't mean less profit, the success of ESPN recently and Katamari Damacy may be evidence of this.

      I remember reading there was similar debate in the industry about DVD pricing, some studios (Disney? Fox?) thought DVDs should be cost far more than the current $20 because movies budgets were increasing. Instead the low price for DVDs turned out to be a real boon for the industry.

  • Let me rephrase TFA:

    "As a good-will gesture, EA has cooperated with our demands and released two groups of hostages, who obviously seemed overexhausted to deliver inferior products. The hostages are currently under rehabilitation (read as: Finding a better job). Due to the fact that this good-will gesture resulted in profits for the company, EA decided that it will release more groups of hostages in the course of the year. Maybe they're not so bad after all.

    And here's Mike with the weather."

  • I live about a mile from the offices (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gphinch ( 722686 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:31PM (#11486850) Homepage
    Maybe they shouldn't have spent all their money on an all glass building 1/2 mile from the beach, compelete with full soccer field. Perks are nice, but nothing beats a reliable paycheck.

  • Of course (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fireman sam ( 662213 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:31PM (#11486855) Homepage Journal
    You do not need to produce quality when you have created yourself a monopoly. The future for EA will be crappy sports titles for the small price of $99.99

    • Re:Of course (Score:2, Troll)

      by Edgewize ( 262271 )
      Uninformed people piss me off to no end.

      EA did not solicit an exclusive contract!

      The NFL announced that it was going to SELL an exclusive contract, and only one company could win it. So of course EA had to bid, or they were sunk.

      Don't blame EA (whatever other evils they have performed) for the NFL's crap.
  • don't you have a law preventing mergers that may reduce market competition? EA is getting WAY too big, and yet it's still eating up companies.

  • Just think... (Score:4, Funny)

    by elmegil ( 12001 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @09:47PM (#11487547) Homepage Journal
    if they laid off ALL their employees, their liabilities would be zero and their profits infinite!

  • The Big One (Score:4, Funny)

    by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @10:34PM (#11487908)
    Anybody who's seen Michael Moore's The Big One would know that this is the standard way that companies operate. Lay off everyone just when you're starting to go good. Sad to see a Canadian company doing it though.

  • Become a consultant, for fuck's sake! (Score:3, Funny)

    by jlseagull ( 106472 ) on Thursday January 27, 2005 @01:10AM (#11489166) Homepage
    Stop whining if you lost your job. Become a damn consultant! I was making $4500 a month working at a fulltime job as a grad fresh out of college with an M.S. I got laid off with their entire R&D department. So instead of looking around for another corporate butt to kiss, "please massuh, give me a job...", I started my own consulting company at the age of 25.

    Six months later, I'm raking in $8100 a month and surprisingly no one questions my age. I have two patents in the works, and I'm on the verge of renting an office down the street so I can walk to work. I and only I am responsible for my own success or failure.

    Life rocks!

  • Ironic (Score:3, Informative)

    by retro128 ( 318602 ) on Thursday January 27, 2005 @04:48AM (#11490251)
    I have in front of me the sleeve of Bill Budge's Pinball Construction Set, circa 1984. On the back is says the following:

    ABOUT OUR COMPANY: We're an association of electronic artists who share a common goal. We want to fulfill the potential of personal computing. That's a tall order. But with enough imagination and enthusiasm we thing there's a good chance for success. Our products, like this progra, are evidence of our intent. If you'd like to get involved, please write us at:

    Electronic Arts
    2755 Campus Drive
    San Mateo, CA 94403

    It sucks what happens when the f'ing suits take over. Oh how I long for the golden days...

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