EA has reportedly laid off over 200 contract QA testers at its Baton Rouge, Louisiana office – the vast majority of its Apex Legends QA team – during an unscheduled Zoom call this morning.
According to Kotaku, QA testers were informed they were losing their jobs, effective immediately, during a mandatory Zoom meeting held at 8am CT by their contracting agency Magnit Global. Sources told the site that EA’s whole Baton Rouge QA team has now been disbanded as a result of the call, amounting to what one former employee called “essentially their entire Apex Legends QA staff” on Twitter.
In a statement provided to Kotaku, EA did not comment on the layoffs directly, but did confirm changes at its Baton Rouge office. “As part of our ongoing global strategy,” the publisher wrote, “we are expanding the distribution of our Apex Legends testing team and ending testing execution that’s been concentrated in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, impacting services provided by our third-party provider.”
“Our global team, inclusive of remote playtesters across the US, enables us to increase the hours per week we’re able to test and optimise the game,” EA continued, “and reflects a commitment to understand and better serve our growing community around the world.”
Workers impacted by today’s layoffs will reportedly be given 60 days severance pay.
News of mass layoffs at EA’s Baton Rouge site comes a month after the publisher announced it was cancelling the development of Apex Legends Mobile and Battlefield Mobile. As a result of the latter cancellation, its developer, Industrial Toys, was shut down.