Catherwood LibraryILR School

Electronic Arts, the parent company of many famous video games such as Fifa, The Sims, Madden, and many other renowned games, will lay off 6% of its workforce, which will affect around 800 employees. The company will cancel the development of various games and will reduce office space as it works to restructure the organization internally in the company. During the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for video games skyrocketed. After the pandemic ended, demand stagnated, and rising production costs and increasing competition have led to layoffs at various video game companies. It is likely that these companies overhired and expanded too much due to heightened expectations for the video game industry after the large growth during the pandemic. Over 6500 jobs in the video game industry have been affected worldwide this year, with many of the job cuts affecting workers in California. Many video game companies are located in San Francisco or Los Angeles, including Electronic Arts, Unity, Amazon Gaming division, and Riot Games. Affected workers are looking for open positions on different teams in the same company, or at openings at other video game companies, as the state is home to over 700 of these companies.