EA, the company that last year said there would be "no immediate changes” to workers’ “job, team, or daily work, as a result of” its pending $55 billion sale to a consortium of buyers headed up by Saudi Arabia, sure seems intent on changing things up for reasons that I’m sure are completely unrelated.
This week, Kotaku reported that EA laid off an unknown number of employees in the US and India, seemingly impacting recruitment, customer support, trust and safety, and IT teams. In an internal email, the company referenced an effort to “adapt how we work to better meet fans’ changing needs.” It’s the third round of layoffs at EA this year, with others impacting developers on Skate and Battlefield, the latter of which was the best-selling game of 2025 in the US. This follows a 2025 in which EA took the scythe to BioWare, Respawn, and Cliffhanger Games to the tune of hundreds of employees.
Meanwhile, at the recent Summer Game Fest-adjacent Game Business Live conference, Electronic Arts' president of enterprise development Laura Miele sang the praises of—what else—AI. Asked if she believes that AI will shorten game development cycles, she replied:
I really believe in what I've seen, that I'm pretty excited about. I've always wanted to help our studio developers remove friction and I've always kind of wanted to be a hero to them and help them create career-defining experiences.
I think that AI, what I've seen, how AI has enabled removing friction from our pipelines and our tools and our workflows, has been pretty exciting,” she said. “It's removed some tedium out of their jobs. And I've seen faster prototyping. I've seen faster creativity and shorter, faster conversations around creativity and coming to alignment. So, we're seeing it and I think there's a real rise of creativity that comes from removing some of the tedious tasks out of development.
Even ChatGPT, which I’m sure Miele regularly consults to learn what she wants for breakfast, would probably be able to tell you that moves like these pave the way for EA’s incoming new regime, which—as part of the buyout—will be saddled with $20 billion in debt. EA has said that business as usual will continue for the foreseeable future and that it will retain creative control, but based on how Saudi Arabia has conducted itself in numerous other areas, that seems highly unlikely.
46 members of congress have voiced opposition to the deal, with US representative Maxwell Frost recently joining popular The Sims YouTuber Kayla “Lilsimsie” Sims during a livestream to get the word out about its many perilous pitfalls. Since then, the group that helped put the stream together, Players Alliance, has staged demonstrations in DC, Redwood City, Orlando, and Madison to show that at least a vocal contingent of EA’s audience do not plan to take this lying down. It has also collected 73,000 signatures on a petition demanding that the US treasury secretary block the deal.
“Gamers warned for months that EA going private would exacerbate cost-cutting measures that will put hundreds of Americans’ livelihoods at risk,” Otis East, a member of Players Alliance, said in a statement received by Aftermath. “It’s a reality that’s happening now—as a result of this deal, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as the head of the [Saudi Public Investment Fund], will enrich himself precisely because Americans are losing their jobs. If Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent cares more for American workers than the riches of an absolute monarch, he must make every effort to block the EA buyout.”
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Nathan Grayson
