Over 200 quality assurance testers for Apex Legends were abruptly fired by Electronic Arts this week, Kotaku reports. The pink slips were handed out to the entire Baton Rouge testing branch over a Zoom call at the end of a shift. All affected employees were handed 60 days of severance as a result.
Bizarrely, EA says that the layoffs will benefit testing for vague reasons: “As part of our ongoing global strategy, we are expanding the distribution of our Apex Legends testing team and ending testing execution that’s been concentrated in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, impacting services provided by our third-party provider. Our global team, inclusive of remote playtesters across the U.S., enables us to increase the hours per week we’re able to test and optimize the game and reflects a commitment to understand and better serve our growing community around the world.”
EA recently cancelled the mobile version of Apex Legends, saying that the game had “begun to fall short of that bar for quality, quantity, and cadence.”
EA just fired its entire Baton Rouge studio, which is essentially their entire Apex Legends QA staff.
— Ben (@TopMarx420) February 28, 2023
