2026 isn’t halfway done yet at the time of this writing, but EA has already instituted its third wave of layoffs. While the exact number of jobs affected is unclear at this time, reporting has confirmed that multiple offices have been impacted by the layoffs. Among the departments impacted are customer support, internal IT, and recruitment, as well as the trust and safety team. These layoffs are hitting teams in North America as well as EA’s offices in India, highlighting the global reach of these changes. This is on top of the studio also shuttering AAA games under their umbrella.
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As reported by Kotaku, EA has been shedding employees and closing developers since 2023, with massive layoffs at BioWare, Respawn, and Codemasters. Even Battlefield 6 developer DICE isn’t safe from the layoffs, despite the online shooter becoming the most successful premium game in North America during 2025. It’s been a rough year for EA employees, who have either been forced to watch colleagues pack up their things or do so themselves. It may also only be the beginning of some very big changes for EA, which in turn could impact the industry at large.
EA’s Layoffs Are Part Of A Wider Wave Of Industry Woes
EA certainly isn’t alone in carrying out these massive layoffs. Just a few days before this writing, Sony announced that Bungie will be going through massive layoffs of its own in response to the end of Destiny 2 and the underperformance of Marathon. Epic Games went through similar moves earlier this year, while Ubisoft’s massive company-wide staff cuts and studio closures sent ripples through the entire industry. Xbox Game Studios has been even more drastic, threatening several studios with closure. Overall, job security in the gaming industry feels low at the moment, especially as several investors in the games industry have been balking at the massive price tag and lengthy development cycles for AAA games.
EA’s situation feels somewhat unique, however. Their recent decisions aren’t necessarily all driven by lagging game sales. If that was the entire motivation behind cuts, then DICE would have likely been safe given the massive success of Battlefield 6. Clearly, there’s something else going on behind the scenes at EA that makes these closures and layoffs seem not only prudent but necessary. The thing is, EA is about to be in a very different situation, given that it is in the middle of being acquired by a larger conglomerate, which raises questions about the motivations behind the latest cuts.
Why EA’s Layoffs Feel Different
All of this is being done ahead of the company’s acquisition by a group of companies that includes Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners. As with any major company acquisition and subsequent merger, redundancies and new motivations are going to result in some big changes at the company. However, EA’s decision to lay off so many people across so many developers speaks to a slash-and-burn approach that might leave some players anxious about the future of the publisher — and developers less likely than ever to have confidence in their job security. While the consolidation of smaller developers across the industry in the last decade was sold to the public as a chance for major companies to give backing to more idiosyncratic creators, the financial freedom to create unique experiences, the cost of development, and the lack of blockbuster sales have left most of the industry in a chaotic state.
EA’s decision to go through layoffs across multiple teams, either to make the sale more palatable or to clear room for new directives from the investors, highlights how much gaming companies might need to buckle to outside influences if they want to continue operating at their current states. While the full motivations and metrics for the layoffs remain unclear (and likely always will), the simple fact is that multiple dedicated game developers and company employees — some of whom Kotaku confirmed had been with EA for over a decade — are not out of a job. It’s a sad trend that has dominated much of the gaming space in the last few years. It suggests that EA is willing to cut down on what has worked before in the name of what could work going forward. It means the culture at the company might be changing in some key ways, and it remains to be seen how that will impact the publisher’s future games.
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