The update makes it sounds like they are letting go of a lot of "old school" developers and hiring a new breed of digital gurus.

Less focus on your standard boxed title for console/PC and more focus on online/mobile gaming.

Originally posted by Distopia

Originally posted by sk8chalif

Haha, we all saw this coming,  lucky i don't work for them anymore,

This type of response will always boggle me, it seems somewhat sadistic IMO. To be clear I understand disliking corporations, but getting your jollies off of others loss of employment is just not right.  Most of those people are just doing what they're told to do like any other employee. You can bet most of those truly responsible will still be coming to work the next day, making as much as 10-20 of those others combined.

Well said Dis.  Remember this is peoples lives we are talking about here. Try and behave for a second like you are not all teanage/middleaged disfunctional malcontents and have a little empathy before shooting your mouths off.

Originally posted by Souldrainer

Originally posted by AmbrosiaAmor

Kotaku posted this about half an hour ago. Note that at this time it is labled a RUMOR

Article can be found here:

 

http://kotaku.com/5902222/report-ea-about-to-fire-500+1000-people

 

"According to a report on Startup Grind, a site that normally deals with tech companies and their founders, publisher Electronic Arts will very soon lay off as many as 1000 employees.

Originally planned to take place last week, the lay offs have reportedly been slightly postponed, though may now take place " as soon as this week".

The report claims between 500-1000 employees will be affected. That's a lot of people, even for a company as big as Electronic Arts.

Startup Grind's report goes on to speculate the layoffs are a result of a disappointing 2011 in which a few hit games (like Battlefield 3) had their sales overshadowed by an overspend on marketing, expensive acquisitions and disappointing subscriber numbers for big-budget MMO Star Wars: Old Republic.

We've contacted EA for confirmation, and will update if we hear back."

EA, a complany which owns 400+ games and has over 70,000 employees... they just last week closed off a ton of old gaming servers.  This?  This company laid off a large chunk of people?  OK.  Cause for a second there, I thought this was SWTOR-related, but since it's not even remotely related to the game, WRONG FORUM!

Oh you mean the part in the rumor orignally posted where it said:

"and disappointing subscriber numbers for big-budget MMO Star Wars: Old Republic."

That wasn't related to TOR at all... or maybe you replied in the WRONG THREAD?

*edit*

Oh and:   "EA, a complany which owns 400+ games and has over 70,000 employees... "

EMPLOYEES: 9,000 worldwide as of March 31, 2012

My source for how many employees EA has is:  http://www.ea.com/about

I'm not sure who your source is about 70,000...   I think EA probably has the correct number.

Originally posted by BloodyViking

Originally posted by RodimusPrime

Looks like SWTOR sold another million copies since their earning call on dec 31.

OR they decided to add the number of trials to the "sold" number to pad them a bit.

 So you choose to ignore one part of the article because it does not fit your narrative?

Originally posted by Souldrainer

Originally posted by AmbrosiaAmor

Kotaku posted this about half an hour ago. Note that at this time it is labled a RUMOR

Article can be found here:

 

http://kotaku.com/5902222/report-ea-about-to-fire-500+1000-people

 

"According to a report on Startup Grind, a site that normally deals with tech companies and their founders, publisher Electronic Arts will very soon lay off as many as 1000 employees.

Originally planned to take place last week, the lay offs have reportedly been slightly postponed, though may now take place " as soon as this week".

The report claims between 500-1000 employees will be affected. That's a lot of people, even for a company as big as Electronic Arts.

Startup Grind's report goes on to speculate the layoffs are a result of a disappointing 2011 in which a few hit games (like Battlefield 3) had their sales overshadowed by an overspend on marketing, expensive acquisitions and disappointing subscriber numbers for big-budget MMO Star Wars: Old Republic.

We've contacted EA for confirmation, and will update if we hear back."

EA, a complany which owns 400+ games and has over 70,000 employees... they just last week closed off a ton of old gaming servers.  This?  This company laid off a large chunk of people?  OK.  Cause for a second there, I thought this was SWTOR-related, but since it's not even remotely related to the game, WRONG FORUM!

Well it has everything to do with SW:TOR because even EA has claimed that the success or failure of SW:TOR will be the absolute factor in the future of EA. The rise and fall of EAs stock prices are absolutly unarguably directly related to what is happening in SW:TOR. Just pull up a 6 month chart of EA stock prices and compare every drop in stock prices to the day or day after some big blunder with the game. I cannot prove it but I would bet that about 50% of all Ea assets are currently resting on the success or failure of this single game.

You are claiming that they have 70,000 employees but that doesnt mesh with the idea that 1000 employess would be about 11% of the company.

Originally posted by bobfish

The update makes it sounds like they are letting go of a lot of "old school" developers and hiring a new breed of digital gurus.

Less focus on your standard boxed title for console/PC and more focus on online/mobile gaming.

As I stated, they shut down a bunch of old games a few days ago... it's a direct cause and effect.. unrelated to SWTOR.

I know Kotaku hates SWTOR because it's not from NC Soft, where they get most of their MMO revenue, but at the end of the day, we don't even know how SWTOR is doing.  It might be booming or failing, for all we know.  If I had to speculate, I would say somewhere in between.

Were this news actually related to SWTOR, it would be BIOWARE layoffs.....

Originally posted by NeoZcar2

Originally posted by Souldrainer

Originally posted by AmbrosiaAmor

Kotaku posted this about half an hour ago. Note that at this time it is labled a RUMOR

Article can be found here:

 

http://kotaku.com/5902222/report-ea-about-to-fire-500+1000-people

 

"According to a report on Startup Grind, a site that normally deals with tech companies and their founders, publisher Electronic Arts will very soon lay off as many as 1000 employees.

Originally planned to take place last week, the lay offs have reportedly been slightly postponed, though may now take place " as soon as this week".

The report claims between 500-1000 employees will be affected. That's a lot of people, even for a company as big as Electronic Arts.

Startup Grind's report goes on to speculate the layoffs are a result of a disappointing 2011 in which a few hit games (like Battlefield 3) had their sales overshadowed by an overspend on marketing, expensive acquisitions and disappointing subscriber numbers for big-budget MMO Star Wars: Old Republic.

We've contacted EA for confirmation, and will update if we hear back."

EA, a complany which owns 400+ games and has over 70,000 employees... they just last week closed off a ton of old gaming servers.  This?  This company laid off a large chunk of people?  OK.  Cause for a second there, I thought this was SWTOR-related, but since it's not even remotely related to the game, WRONG FORUM!

Well it has everything to do with SW:TOR because even EA has claimed that the success or failure of SW:TOR will be the absolute factor in the future of EA. The rise and fall of EAs stock prices are absolutly unarguably directly related to what is happening in SW:TOR. Just pull up a 6 month chart of EA stock prices and compare every drop in stock prices to the day or day after some big blunder with the game. I cannot prove it but I would bet that about 50% of all Ea assets are currently resting on the success or failure of this single game.

You are claiming that they have 70,000 employees but that doesnt mesh with the idea that 1000 employess would be about 11% of the company.

Was just throwing out a number... they probably have closer to 300K-500K employees.  In any case, you are wrong.  Closing down old shit means NOTHING.... absolutely zilch.

Originally posted by Souldrainer

Originally posted by bobfish

The update makes it sounds like they are letting go of a lot of "old school" developers and hiring a new breed of digital gurus.

Less focus on your standard boxed title for console/PC and more focus on online/mobile gaming.

As I stated, they shut down a bunch of old games a few days ago... it's a direct cause and effect.. unrelated to SWTOR.

 

I know Kotaku hates SWTOR because it's not from NC Soft, where they get most of their MMO revenue, but at the end of the day, we don't even know how SWTOR is doing.  It might be booming or failing, for all we know.  If I had to speculate, I would say somewhere in between.

 

Were this news actually related to SWTOR, it would be BIOWARE layoffs.....

What you stated was that EA has 70,000 employees

As I stated EA http://www.ea.com/about says it has 9,000

Pretty much what I get out of this is.. you have no clue what you are talking about.  

*edit*

There are no "BioWare" layoffs after EA fully purchased the company.   All employees working on TOR are part of EA's world wide employee roster... I mean seriously... *.*

Anyway have a nice day.

Souldrainer sigh.....It means everything... You dont understand how a corporation works... They bet everything on a major project and when it fails they have to shut down smaller less "important" but still profitable projects to sidebar thier assets to stay afloat.

In December 2010 EA had just over 10,000 employess and laid off 1100 and shut down 12 studios. You are absolutly insane if you think the company grew 700% in less then 2 years time. 

Originally posted by RodimusPrime

Originally posted by cinos

Originally posted by RodimusPrime

Looks like SWTOR sold another million copies since their earning call on dec 31.

Just fyi, that's an estimate from an outside source. Not official numbers.

 So the rumor firings is ok to post but not the also rumored increase in sales in the same article?

Yep, that's exactly what I said. Wasn't just pointing out to you that the number is merely a guess, seeing as you appeared to be taking it as fact. I definitely had ulterior motives for pointing that out to you.

Tbh, I'd be extremely surprised if they hadn't sold another million copies in the 4 months since launch, considering the ip and all.

I really hope this layout focuses on their bloated corrupted marketing, management, and PR departments but I doubt it.  They probaly just get rid of more programmers because of course games not living up to their hype is their fault, not at all over hypeing or poor management choices.

Originally posted by Antarious

Originally posted by Souldrainer

Originally posted by bobfish

The update makes it sounds like they are letting go of a lot of "old school" developers and hiring a new breed of digital gurus.

Less focus on your standard boxed title for console/PC and more focus on online/mobile gaming.

As I stated, they shut down a bunch of old games a few days ago... it's a direct cause and effect.. unrelated to SWTOR.

 

I know Kotaku hates SWTOR because it's not from NC Soft, where they get most of their MMO revenue, but at the end of the day, we don't even know how SWTOR is doing.  It might be booming or failing, for all we know.  If I had to speculate, I would say somewhere in between.

 

Were this news actually related to SWTOR, it would be BIOWARE layoffs.....

 

What you stated was that EA has 70,000 employees

 

As I stated EA http://www.ea.com/about says it has 9,000

 

Pretty much what I get out of this is.. you have no clue what you are talking about.   Anyway.. have a good day.

 

You could also list all these old games and servers EA just shut down.. because EA is also unaware of those.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/ea-shutting-down-over-a-dozen-game-servers-6366856 

#1  ^^ you being wrong^^  ^^was published on a few hundred sites^^

I was throwing out numbers to make a point that losing a few thousand employees for a big company is not a big event.  Actual numbers were, and are, play money.  It's not important to my point, at all.  It should be implied that I was speaking figuratively.  If not, oops.

It's still not relavant to SWTOR.  Or, was this because of SWTOR too?

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Electronic-Arts-Fires-1-500-Employees-126527.shtml 

EA is EA, Bioware is Bioware, and SWTOR is SWTOR... only very rarely is news about the former even remotely related to the other two.

I knew that Riccitiello (EA CEO) was lieing, or at least he was economical with the truth claiming the 1.5 Million subscribers

When I left SWTOR, my server felt empty, but during peak time it was flagged as FULL..............

If the game has 500K subscribers now they are lucky, but my guess is that RIFT has more subscribers than SWTOR at the moment.

I feel for the people who are going to lose their job, because are always the hard working people who pays for the fat cats mistakes (Riccitiello)

They need to fire the whole marketing department and hire more creative who can make original games

I really hope that EA will never be able to put their hands on Bethesda, the only big indipendent game company left after Bioware.

It would be another disaster for the gaming industry

Originally posted by ste2000

I knew that Riccitiello (EA CEO) was lieing, or at least he was economical with the truth claiming the 1.5 Million subscribers

When I left SWTOR, my server felt empty, but during peak time it was flagged as FULL..............

If the game has 500K subscribers now they are lucky, but my guess is that RIFT has more subscribers than SWTOR at the moment.

I feel for the people who are going to lose their job, because are always the hard working people who pays for the fat cats mistakes (Riccitiello)

 Actually it was 1.7 million subscribers and if you think that the game only has 500k and is lower that Rift we can always compare it's xfire position to SWTOR.

Originally posted by RodimusPrime

Originally posted by ste2000

I knew that Riccitiello (EA CEO) was lieing, or at least he was economical with the truth claiming the 1.5 Million subscribers

When I left SWTOR, my server felt empty, but during peak time it was flagged as FULL..............

If the game has 500K subscribers now they are lucky, but my guess is that RIFT has more subscribers than SWTOR at the moment.

I feel for the people who are going to lose their job, because are always the hard working people who pays for the fat cats mistakes (Riccitiello)

 Actually it was 1.7 million subscribers and if you think that the game only has 500k and is lower that Rift we can always compare it's xfire position to SWTOR.

If people playing are complaining about empty servers that is way more valid than numbers that are guesses and speculation.

If you play on a empty server will it really help if some PR-guy claims its healthy?

who cares about ea seriously?

wow anyone aware how many staff were working on this title due to the size of the money involved :D

And of course with you all being such avid mmorpg forum dwellers the news should not be of any shock to you because you all know right that after a major release the teams of that size in such a large project are cut right back and moved onto other things?

Originally posted by Hurvart

Originally posted by RodimusPrime

Originally posted by ste2000

I knew that Riccitiello (EA CEO) was lieing, or at least he was economical with the truth claiming the 1.5 Million subscribers

When I left SWTOR, my server felt empty, but during peak time it was flagged as FULL..............

If the game has 500K subscribers now they are lucky, but my guess is that RIFT has more subscribers than SWTOR at the moment.

I feel for the people who are going to lose their job, because are always the hard working people who pays for the fat cats mistakes (Riccitiello)

 Actually it was 1.7 million subscribers and if you think that the game only has 500k and is lower that Rift we can always compare it's xfire position to SWTOR.

If people playing are complaining about empty servers that is way more valid than numbers that are guesses and speculation.

If you play on a empty server will it really help if some PR-guy claims its healthy?

 I am playing, not on an empty server though. Do I think they have lost some people, yes, do I think they could consolidate some servers, yes, do I think it as dramatic as some people here , no.

Originally posted by Distopia

Originally posted by sk8chalif

Haha, we all saw this coming,  lucky i don't work for them anymore,

This type of response will always boggle me, it seems somewhat sadistic IMO. To be clear I understand disliking corporations, but getting your jollies off of others loss of employment is just not right.  Most of those people are just doing what they're told to do like any other employee. You can bet most of those truly responsible will still be coming to work the next day, making as much as 10-20 of those others combined.

I doubt anyone is cheering that people are losing their jobs.  The delight is in knowing that EA is bleeding.  Yes, there is a difference and yes, you *do* know that.

I fidn it funny that Souldrainer still thinks Bioware is its own company... Bioware never had anything to do with SW:TOR... EA created a studio in Austin called EA Austin and renamed it Bioware Austin when it began production on SW:TOR because it simply cannot sell games effectively under its own name. There is only one real Bioware studio and it is in Canada. Everyone who worked on SW:TOR got a paycheck with the name EA on it.