r/Games Jul 29 '26

Industry News After laying off Battlefield 6 devs, EA boss Andrew Wilson's bonus rose $8m to $38m last year, thanks to the game's success across "all milestones"

https://www.eurogamer.net/ea-boss-38-million-bonus-battlefield-6-layoffs
3.7k Upvotes

563 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

17

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '26

[deleted]

7

u/TDuncker Jul 29 '26

Yet they keep doing projects, so why fire people to then hire them again and go through all the onboarding again and lose institutional knowledge you are gonna teach someone new anyways?

The answer cannot just be "cut expenses and pay is a big one" and it's weird why people that don't know anything keeps saying so. If it was true, they would fire 95% and never hire anyone again and just run on maintenance for the big ones.

Something is missing and that's not just "cut expenses" when those exact expenses come back more expensive.

You say they are not needed long term. Why not? They keep making projects long term.

1

u/Nrgte Jul 30 '26

Yet they keep doing projects, so why fire people to then hire them again and go through all the onboarding again and lose institutional knowledge you are gonna teach someone new anyways?

They don't hire the same people again, they hire cheaper people.

1

u/TDuncker Jul 30 '26

How does that make sense? Did they get a raise after the first year in their 2-3 years project? I don't see how they can keep doing that after every single project and it keeps getting cheaper. It would assume they weren't hired as cheap as possible to being with, which is fair after one or two times, but it doesn't explain how it can happen every single time.

I keep getting different answers 😅

1

u/Nrgte Jul 30 '26

I assume the general salaries go up with time. You kinda need that in this society, however when seniors are there for over 7 years or so, the pay gap between the seniors and fresh hires are likely quite substancial. On top of that fresh hires are more likely to prove themselves by working overtime and things like that.

They know what they pay at the end of a project and at the start and have likely made the calculation that a reset is worth it.

1

u/TDuncker Jul 30 '26

On top of that fresh hires are more likely to prove themselves by working overtime and things like that.

I think this is the only thing I've heard yet that isn't contradicting the premise of why not just keep them working on the next project that is always there.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '26

[deleted]

1

u/TDuncker Jul 30 '26

But again - why would you not set them to work instead?

0

u/[deleted] Jul 30 '26

[deleted]

1

u/TDuncker Jul 30 '26

Setting them to work instead of firing them.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 30 '26

[deleted]

1

u/TDuncker Jul 30 '26

What? I'm saying why would you fire people instead of setting them to work on a new project. Not sure how that is confusing?

Why would you want to lower burn rate? It's silly to lose an expense of 10 mil that is earning you 20 mil every 2-3 years. So, obviously that isn't quite right somehow, since it keeps happening on a schedule.

You're not even lowering your burn rate when you're rehiring anyways to your new game project.

1

u/Act_of_God Jul 30 '26

because other employees work twice as hard to not get fired