EA Lays Off Entire Baton Rouge, LA Testing Staff... On Zoom Call

Ah. Here we go again… Another round of another massive publisher giving QA testers the shaft.

We all know by now that layoffs in the game industry are inevitable. Sometimes it’s because they’re doing the corporate money-shuffling thing. Other times it’s because the video game industry is a bit like the film industry and once a project is finished, the company simply no longer has a need for those people. Whatever the reason, though, there’s a way to go about doing things, and if the report from Kotaku is correct, EA decided to just not worry about all that.

Instead, according to three sources who spoke with Kotaku anonymously, the publisher laid off more than 200 QA testers in their Baton Rouge, LA office. These testers reportedly worked on Respawn Entertainment’s battle royale, Apex Legends.

What makes this scenario worse than a general layoff is how EA reportedly went about it. According to the sources, all the QA testers were “invited” to a mandatory Zoom meeting with their contracting agency, Magnit Global early this morning. This meeting wasn’t scheduled previously and the staff was told to join using their personal devices. It was during this meeting that the entire testing staff was laid off.

While this was a shock to the staff in question, you’d think that the supervisors would have been prepared. This was reportedly not the case, as they weren’t told anything or given time to prepare.

The report also goes on to state that those laid off were only allowed to claim the stuff from the office while being supervised by security and that they will be given a 60-day severance package. Their sources note that this won’t cover the length of a lot of the staff’s contracts.