Electronic Arts, one of the largest game developers, is about to fire 350 employees and reduces its presence in the markets of Japan and Russia.

The company’s CEO Andrew Wilson in his official statement on the site of the developer writes:

“Today we took some important steps as a company to address our challenges and prepare for the opportunities ahead. As we look
across a changing world around us, it’s clear that we must change with it. We’re making deliberate moves to better deliver on our commitments, refine our organization and meet the needs of our players. As part of this, we have made changes to our marketing and publishing organization, our operations teams, and we are ramping down our current presence in Japan and Russia as we focus on different ways to serve our players in those markets. In addition to organizational changes, we are deeply focused on increasing quality in our games and services. Great games will continue to be at the core of everything we do, and we are thinking differently about how to amaze and inspire our players.”

Image: Anthem, Electronic Arts

The statement also said that the reorganization of their business will entail the dismissal of 350 of the 9,000 people currently employed by Electronic Arts. However, the company reports that it is doing everything possible to ensure that this process for their employees will be as painless as possible. How exactly they will compensate employees’ termination, the statement does not specify.

According to Kanobu, EA closes the Moscow office entirely within the business centralization:
“We are developing the publishing direction, creating a new central team focused on distributing products in various markets. In this regard, we are transferring our operations to Russia to the team responsible for working with the expanded region of Eastern Europe — the separate office of the Russian division in Moscow will be closed, which is a logical step in centralizing processes. "

All the dismissed employees are not directly involved in the development of games, so EA assures that these changes will not affect the quality of their games nor their distribution.

Large-scale layoffs in GameDev are becoming a trend. Just this February, five serious companies fell under the reductions.