Digital Arts has made a spherical of layoffs at UK-based racing video games developer Codemasters.
The writer confirmed the redundancies in a press release to IGN, though it didn’t say what number of staff had been impacted by the transfer.
“Our enterprise is consistently altering as we try to ship wonderful video games and providers that preserve our gamers engaged, linked, and impressed,” an EA spokesperson stated.
“At occasions, this requires the corporate to make small-scale organizational adjustments that align our groups and assets to satisfy evolving enterprise wants and priorities.
“We proceed to work carefully with these affected by these adjustments, offering applicable help all through this course of.”
EA acquired Codemasters for $1.2 billion in early 2021, having trumped a beforehand accepted provide to purchase the corporate made by Rockstar proprietor Take-Two.
The acquisition introduced Codemasters’ F1 and FIA World Rally Championship licenses, and its owned IPs Grid, Grime and Undertaking Automobiles, underneath the identical roof as EA’s Want for Velocity and Burnout franchises.
Discussing the strategic rationale behind the deal previous to its completion, EA stated it will create “a worldwide chief in racing leisure” and allow it “to launch new racing experiences yearly”.
Final 12 months, Codemasters’ Grime 5 staff in Cheshire was built-in into fellow UK-based EA studio Criterion Video games “to create the way forward for Want for Velocity”.
Codemasters’ two most up-to-date releases, June’s F1 2023 and November’s EA Sports activities WRC, have reportedly struggled commercially.
EA restructured its studios into two organisations, EA Sports activities and EA Leisure, earlier this 12 months. Criterion subsequently switched divisions, from the previous to the latter, to work on the Battlefield franchise.
The writer stated Criterion would additionally proceed to work on the Want for Velocity collection underneath the stewardship of Respawn co-founder Vince Zampella, who now leads the studios accountable for Apex Legends, its Star Wars and Battlefield video games.
Job losses throughout the video games trade have been widespread in 2023. Firms impacted by layoffs this 12 months embody Embracer, Xbox Recreation Studios, Epic Video games, Sony Interactive Leisure, CD Projekt, Unity, Ubisoft, Riot Video games, Blizzard, Crystal Dynamics, BioWare, Placing Distance, Team17, Frontier Developments, Telltale Video games, Digital Extremes, Amazon and Digital Bros.
