EA is Reportedly Laying Off More Than 200 Apex Legends QA Testers
A new update reveals EA is reportedly laying off a team of over 200 QA employees working on Apex Legends, months before the official end of their contract. Since its debut in 2019, the battle royale from Respawn Entertainment and EA has risen to become one of the most popular games in the world. The game regularly boasts hundreds of thousands of players on Steam and even spawned a short-lived mobile version, scheduled to end service later this year. Now, however, a recent report casts a shadow over the game's success.
The reveal regarding layoffs at EA comes as both Respawn and EA share ambitious intentions for Apex Legends' future. With Apex recently launching its 16th competitive season, design director Evan Nikolich previously expressed his desire to see the game last for 20 years, akin to massively popular shooter Counter-Strike. Apex Legends has continued its rampant success with Season 16, boasting a record Steam player count of over 500,000 coinciding with the new season. Now, however, a report from TheGamer reveals EA will be laying off over 200 QA workers.
Apex Legends Dev Wants the Game to Last for 20 Years
A recent report from TheGamer reveals statements by several affected employees, confirming the layoffs by EA with no attempt to move the employees onto other games. The layoffs are reportedly centralized in EA's Baton Rouge quality verification team and multiple employees have expressed the sentiment that they had been «replaced» by EA's UK-based QA team. The Apex Legends team had been working alongside the UK-based team to train them for the job, feeling that EA was having them «train their replacements.»
EA reportedly did not provide reasoning for the hundreds of surprise layoffs handed out to the Baton Rouge
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