Electronic Arts Confirms Layoffs in Montreal and Los Angeles

TORONTO – Electronic Arts’ Visceral Montreal, the studio behind the upcoming Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel release, has been hit with deep layoffs.

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EA president Frank Gibeau in an upbeat online blog entry, “Transition Is Our Friend,” said employees in Los Angeles, Montreal and “some smaller locations” had been let go.

Gibeau gave no firm numbers on the jobs lost.

He was responding to a flurry of online chatter on Wednesday indicating layoffs in Montreal and Los Angeles, and that the Canadian studio had shut down.

Gibeau said EA attempts to retrain employees where possible.

“But when it is not possible to redeploy a team, we soften the tough decisions with assistance,” he added in the blog.

This week that included layoffs with severance packages “to ease their transition to a new job.”

EA, meanwhile, is going through its own console transition as new platforms, including Sony’s PlayStation 4, come onto the market.

Gibeau said EA “has established a clear leadership position on both the iOS and Android systems” with product like The Simpsons: Tapped Out and the upcoming release Real Racing 3.