EA’s Firemonkeys Studios will see layoffs of round two-thirds of its 120 workers, with the studio transitioning to a monotitle strategy supporting The Sims Freeplay.
The information was first reported via Twitter by journalist Jack Ryan who famous that EA was shifting the studio’s growth solely to the Sims cellular spinoff. Kotaku Australia additionally reportedly learnt that the tough estimate could be two-thirds of the employees on the studio would both be reassigned to different tasks or laid off. It’s not the primary time the studio has been hit by mass layoffs courtesy of EA, as 40 to 50 employees confronted the boot in 2019.
The studio was most well-known for his or her work on a lot of racing titles, together with Want for Pace: Most Wished, Want for Pace: No Limits and Actual Racing 3, a sequel to Firemint’s Actual Racing 1 & 2. Firemonkeys itself was shaped from the merging of two studios acquired by EA, the aforementioned Firemint and IronMonkey Studios.
The Kotaku report additionally famous that Firemonkeys had lately been a recipient of the Victoria Display screen Incentive programme comparatively lately in 2021.
EA does it once more
By now it ought to come as no shock that EA will minimize employees to maintain prices down, nonetheless the pivot to a solely monotitle strategy for the studio does no less than safeguard Firemonkeys’ continued existence in the intervening time. Nonetheless, it additionally considerably narrows the scope of their growth, because it has reportedly led to the cancellation of Actual Racing 4 in favour of the continued give attention to The Sims: Freeplay.
As all the time the query of the knowledge behind this strategy will likely be on all people’s thoughts, as continued downsizing of the studio might point out a insecurity by EA of their continued success. Nonetheless, it’s additionally a potential hit to confidence in foreign-owned studios in Australia, which has boasted a burgeoning online game scene of its personal that solely lately recovered from an analogous downturn earlier than 2019.
