During a surprise Zoom call, EA reportedly laid off more than 200 quality assurance testers. The employees affected worked primarily at Electronic Arts' Baton Rouge, Louisiana office on the mega-popular battle royale Apex Legends, developed by Respawn Entertainment.
As reported by Kotaku, sources familiar with the meeting said that the contract testers were informed they would be losing their jobs, effective immediately, during an unscheduled Zoom meeting at 8 am on Tuesday. Some of the testers laid off had just finished working their overnight shift.
Current and former testers took to Twitter to share the news.
EA would not comment directly on the layoffs, but a spokesperson for the company told Kotaku via email that “testing games is an integral part of delivering the best experiences for our players" and that "as part of our ongoing global strategy, 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 U.S., enables us to increase the hours per week we’re able to test and optimize the game and reflects a commitment to understand and better serve our growing community around the world."
This unhappy news follows the launch of Apex Legends' 16th season of support, known as Revelry, and came as a shock even to full-time managers and supervisors, who were not told ahead of time. Contractors affected will reportedly receive 60 days' severance, sources said.
What do you think of this news, and how EA delivered it? Show some respect in the comments section below.
[source kotaku.com]
Comments 19
In before someone says publisher QA testers aren't considered "disposable" by bug publishers (publishers in general)... At least there's 60 days of severance which is good considering these testers were probably contract if they worked through a 3rd party, and you don't really gave benefits at all if you're not working as a full time employee.
Managers being told nothing is par for the course too. Most of them worked their way up the company as testers themselves, and the corporate leaders don't usually tell them anything to keep things from "leaking".
Sounds like they want to expand studio QA or even hire a different testers that work closer with the publisher.
Very sad to hear, but QA experience is great experience. You can find work fairly quickly with that.
I curious most studios still have QA, because game technical quality is lowest in history and no studio cares day one release versions. After release they care only reported bugs.
And quality of game itself is even lower on the list...
@djlard If there wasn't a QA team the games you play would much much buggier. The bugs you're able to see, have already been reported by QA, but weren't a priority to be fixed by the engineering team. And it's nowhere near the lowest in history...
The video game crash era had way more issues, that couldn't be resolved post launch, and Nintendo would put their seal on anything LJN did, and they put some of the buggiest games known to man. Don't even get me started on Wii shovelware.
Nothing changes. I've worked directly for EA (when they absorbed Bullfrog) and though their shares helped pay for my wedding theres no company I hate more and I despise their approach to what should be a creative endeavour. One thing that's definately not changed is their complete lack of respect for their staff, so this kind of stunt doesn't suprise me at all and simply ensures they will remain gaming's most hated company.
Its rather ironic that EA titles in the last few years are titles that could have definately benefitted from more QA testing - but here we are.
No wonder most AAA games usually shipped with many bugs day one, all the top executive think is the money they saved by firing the qa staff 😕
Anyone working in the Software business is pretty disposable, I know that from experience. Costs go up and profits have to be maintained, if sales don't go up or prices increased (world we live in), people get let go. Despite the obvious deleterious affect it has on the software. Often starting at QA with developers shortly after.
Everyone left is expected to pick up the extra work, which is next to impossible, so corners get cut. You either put the extra effort in or find another job. That's the reality of it.
Less people, less QA, less content. Less demand for the software. Rinse and repeat. Year after year after year.
We can blame the 'suits' as much as we like but the best way to keep people in jobs is to pay a fair price for the software they produce. And support the smaller studios by buying their games in a way they get a cut.
My experience with Apex Legends (since day 1 release) is that it needs more testing and not less.
At the start of each new season there is usually some bugs that range from annoying to game-breaking, and they can often take weeks to fix. Without proper testing I can only imagine it would be even worse.
@Total_Weirdo
My thoughts as well.
No one knows how QA teams work... No wonder video game companies treat their customers like idiots. Oh well, I guess.
@Constable_What Sorry, but game breaking bugs on release? We read about them on almost every second game... That is better now? There should be some kind of fine for programmers or customers refund for "day one patch" developer releases, because that should be put already onto disc.
@djlard It's not every second game. Certainly not game breaking bugs, but maybe we have a different definition of what game breaking is. What was the last game you played that had a game breaking bug?
If you had any game breaking bug before the age of the internet it would just stay broken. QA teams work well into a game's life cycle finding and reporting issues, and then it's up to the studio leadership to make the call on whether it's a priority fix for the engineering team, and then it's up to engineering to put in a fix, and then it's up to QA again to test that fix, and that takes a while to do. In crunch maybe a few hours to a day, but usually a few days of rigorous testing.
Obviously, games shouldn't release broken, but the common sentiment that it's most games that release that way is just factually incorrect, and is only perpetuated by folks that don't remember older times in gaming, weren't alive back then, or are jumping on a bandwagon.
And that's why there will never be a fine for unfinished games across the board, because your point is just demonstrably false. A few games have been absolutely broken on launch, like Cyberpunk, the GTA Remastered Trilogy, and Chrono Cross Remastered (that finally got fixed) most recently. But that's a couple years ago I have to go back to find only a handful of games out of the dozens that have been released in playable non-broken state.
@Constable_What OK, I maybe overreacted with "broken" statement, but unpolished is better word. Invisible walls, falling thru floor, miscalculations or not triggering next "step" in quests - this plagues almost every game. I know games are more complex and it is hard to catch all flies. Try to play some 1.0 versions and you sooner or later get to "how you couldn't see this?" bug. Maybe I've just played too much games before internet... I more and more feel like tester myself, thats why I gave up playing games day one and rather wait couple of years.
@Constable_What With releases like a GTA remake/remaster, Bethesda games, Cyberpunk to name one you sometimes doubt it. The worst one are the big titles a lot of the times. The more money they make the less quality a day 1 release is.
@djlard @Flaming_Kaiser It's the publishers that decide that games are shipped unpolished. QA finds all these bugs, and sometimes in the case of invisible walls and stuff, you even get what's called a NAB (Not a bug) that will count against you professionally.
Just because bugs are found doesn't mean they get fixed. The studio and publisher decides what gets fixed and what issues stay in the game on release. It sucks.
@Constable_What If its a mess and i payed full price for a game then it's a QA problem it's not my problem that publisher ships it like that. In the end its a QA problem and thats why reviews should stop with it can be patched out later nonsense.
Players are the QA testers these days aren't they. As sad of a sentence to make of that kind is. You wouldn't even know they have QA or with how rushed some games get with the 'update it later/ongoing' attitude to many games. Or even if not that just make a game to suit our objective/brand as much as possible (not every staff member making the game or QA has to like what they make and if their ideas (at least on the dev side) got shot down then it is what it is).
Sigh. QA is important, they may think their replaceable and from White/Black box testing of people being brought in to devs familiar with it test the games and can easily make changes formatting you'd think it would be essential if schools info on software development is to be believed too.
But it seems EA want to cut corners on staff to suit numbers for investors with this decisions unless it is some trouble in the studio that's plausible too. But the ones that make it a better product when everyone else is making it. Who else can get the signs out to other staff before it meets the deadline checkpoints.
EA don't make early access games so how are they going for QA, outsourcing then their own QA team? Or is Apex going to end after a while? It's possible that maybe if they think they can't compete in the battle royale space anymore but what about other games in need of QA I wonder.
If there was issues at the studio/with the QA staff sure but otherwise I don't know really how much to believe.
If the companies want unfinished products, pathetic but convincing to some people marketing and to make a project not a product because it's not completed, updates will solve it being the laziest excuse ever.
I'm not sure what else to say they make it clear they don't care so Indie startups of veterans or 1-10 people studios of newcomers to game development are more worth supporting (going retro doesn't help even if it's what some people go for if they want better games, finished games, better times).
I'm all for Nightingale while whatever happens with Bioware staff is what it is and veterans going their own paths. 2014 game of the year nah follow others and make it a generic game Dragon Age Dreadwolf (I hope not but wouldn't be surprised, more has come out and it seems fine enough but still EA makes it clear they don't get Bioware's strengths and just put them in situations).
Then again the Apex mobile changes surprised me too so no idea what they have planned. I don't even play it because it's not my thing but it's still interesting they made that decision and yet QA staff a month or so later hmm. What numbers do they need to make look good to investors this time I wonder, sigh.
@Flaming_Kaiser Yeah, you don't get it. Not surprised.
That's seriously messed up, hope they find better jobs fast.
@Constable_What Just be real they know we accept a broken mess nowadays and patch when we feel like it. Still laughing that people get wild for early access ita just a way to let the players (payers) test for you. I know the publisher has the last word buy I know in the end i pay for a product and i dont like a mess. Nobody is holding the QA personally accountable but the QA is a mess in a lot of games.
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