BATON ROUGE — More than 200 quality assurance testers at Electronic Arts in Baton Rouge were laid off during a surprise Zoom call Tuesday, the video game blog and website Kotaku is reporting.
According to the Kotaku report, the workers fired primarily worked on the video game Apex Legends.
News of the layoffs made its way to social media Tuesday. One person said that staffers were emailed about a Zoom meeting, and that their credentials were immediately revoked following the meeting.
Staffers are reportedly getting 60 days severance. Unfiltered with Kiran has been able to independently verify that information.
Kotaku says that sources told them that all testers at the LSU location were laid off, despite some having just finished their night shifts earlier in the day.
EA, one of the largest video game companies in the world, came to Louisiana in 2008. The company took advantage of the state’s lucrative tax credits offered to digital media companies.
EA wanted to take advantage of LSU’s talent pipeline to grow, and that is exactly what the company did. They soon outgrew their original location on LSU’s campus and soon moved the LSU’s $30 million, 90,000-square-foot Digital Media Center.
In 2013 the company said they expected to have 500 testers working in their LSU facility.
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