Electronic Arts – Gloomberg News

28Feb

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Gaming

EA Does Mass Apex Legends QA Layoff Over Zoom

Image: Respawn Entertainment / EAOver 100 quality assurance testers at Electronic Arts’ Baton Rouge, LA office were abruptly laid off during a surprise Zoom call on Tuesday, three sources familiar with the meeting tell Kotaku. They worked predominantly on Apex Legends, the publisher’s hit battle royale developed by Respawn Entertainment.QA testers, who were all on contractors, were invited to an unscheduled mandatory Zoom meeting at 8 a.m. CT today, and encouraged to join from their personal smartphone or computer. According to three sources, who wished to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to press, management at the Baton Rouge studio laid off the entire testing staff. This news apparently came as a shock not only to those let go, but also full-time supervisors wh...

25Oct

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Gaming

The Sims 4 Devs Apologize To Black Creators After Big Showcase

Screenshot: Electronic ArtsAfter EA unveiled the next installment of The Sims during last week’s Sims Summit, Black content creators were not happy about the lack of inclusion. Critics noted that out of twenty or so people shown, only one was a Black streamer.The publisher showcased Project Rene (which we’ve been calling The Sims 5) and an official modding hub to its eager audience at the Summit on October 18. The stream celebrated its content creator community with a two-minute segment showing their reactions to the baby update. EA included more white people with non-American accents than it did Black creators overall.“Black Simmers [have] been a major impact on The Sims community for years. Literally, the backbone for providing skin tones, body features, hairstyles, and more. Everything ...

5Oct

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Gaming

The New Need For Speed Game Looks Anime AF

Zoom zoom. Screenshot: EA / KotakuFans of Electronic Arts racing series Need for Speed might not have to wait long for the next game because new leaked images show its upcoming game hit the internet, and y’all it’s looking anime AF. Today, members of the r/NeedForSpeed subreddit spotted leaked images of the new Need for Speed Unbound on the Japanese retailer site, Neowing. According to a Google translation of Neowing’s listing of the game, NfS Unbound will only be playable on next-gen consoles, and specifically the PlayStation 5. The Neowing images are tiny, but fans have since found larger versions, which you can view here.NfS Unbound is still being developed by Criterion Games. Back in 2019, the British video game developer, famed for its excellent racers, wrote in a blog post that it wo...

14Sep

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Gaming

The Sims 4 Will Be Free On All Platforms Starting Next Month

The Sims 4Image: EA / MaxisEA announced today that starting next month, the base Sims 4 game on all platforms will be free to download and play. It also announced an upcoming livestream in which Maxis will lay out its plans for the game’s future updates.The Sims 4 is the latest entry in the long-running and incredibly popular life simulation franchise. Like past games in the series, it lets players create their own characters and homes, then watch these digital people live out full lives and help them get jobs, find friendship, or even trap them all in pools to slowly die. Fun stuff. The Sims 4 might be the “newest” game in the series, but it’s not young. It was first released eight years ago in September 2014. Since then, EA has released over 50 pieces of paid DLC for the game in various ...

12Sep

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Gaming

EA And DICE’s Battlefield Series Of Games Is Now 20 Years Old

Screenshot: Saving Private RyanOn September 10, 2002, publishers Electronic Arts and a relatively unknown developed called DICE released a multiplayer shooter called Battlefield 1942. In the 20 years since everyone involved has been on one hell of a ride.The game, which not only featured infantry but also allowed players to control vehicles, was notable for its scale and variety; I avoid pretty much every other online shooter—I’m talking Call of Duty and Counter-Strike, which are infantry-only—like the plague, but have always played Battlefield because I love the way it lets me spawn in as a sniper, get killed then figure, you know what, I’ll drive a tank next, and maybe pilot a fighter after that. battlefield 1942 introIn the 20 years since, the series has changed a lot. Playercounts have...

18Aug

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Gaming

Lord Of The Rings, The Hobbit Rights Sold To Embracer Group

Image: New Line CinemaThe Embracer Group, who are slowly buying any and every video game publisher and studio on the market, just announced that they have purchased Middle-earth Enterprises, the company that owns the big-and-small-screen rights to most of J.R.R. Tolkien’s most important works, including Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.Some background (and please bear with me, this gets complicated): Middle-earth Enterprises used to be a division of The Saul Zaentz Company, a Hollywood production studio that in 1976 managed to pick up the rights to pretty much everything to do with Tolkien except the publication of the books themselves. Those rights were used to make the 1978 animated feature, and ever since have only been licensed out to other companies—an operation overseen by Middle-ear...

17Aug

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Gaming

FIFA 23 Accidentally Sells For Six Cents, EA Honors The Mistake

Image: EA SportsFIFA 23 is currently up for preorder around the world, and is supposed to be a full-price retail release, but in one particular market on one particular store, customers could get one hell of a bargain.Last month, anyone browsing the Epic Games Store in India would have seen that while the standard edition of FIFA 23 cost ₹3,499 (USD$44), the Ultimate Edition—which should have been ₹4,799 (USD$60) was instead listed at ₹4.80.The error was first discovered in late JulyImage: TwitterThat is not a sale price, that is an error, one where the store has clearly put the decimal point in the wrong spot. ₹4.80 works out to be six cents, and as word spread about the savings, users flocked to the store and bought the game. And not just Indian gamers, either; once news got out, fans we...

22May

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Gaming

EA Was Deep In Merger Talks With NBCUniversal

Photo: Christian Petersen (Getty Images)The video game market is consolidating like never before, and Electronic Arts is scrambling like everyone else. The Battlefield and FIFA maker recently pursued a merger with NBCUniversal, and also held potential acquisition talks with Disney, Apple, and other companies, according to a new report by Puck. While a deal isn’t currently in the works, it doesn’t sound like EA plans to give up anytime soon.“In recent years, as media companies have taken greater interest in the rapidly growing gaming industry, Wilson and Electronic Arts have held talks with a number of different potential suitors, including Disney, Apple and Amazon, sources with knowledge of those talks told me,” wrote Puck’s veteran media reporter, Dylan Beyers. “Several sources familiar w...

18May

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Gaming

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund Now Owns 5% Of Nintendo

Image: NintendoSaudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, a near-bottomless pit of cash tasked with diversifying the nation’s economy (and whitewashing their human rights record), has acquired a 5.01% stake in Nintendo.The news was announced in a filing made with Japan’s Finance Ministry, Bloomberg reports. It follows similar investments made last year in Capcom, EA, Take-Two and Activision, along with almost complete ownership of SNK. Bloomberg says this would make the Public Investment Fund the company’s “fifth-largest shareholder”. If this is the first time you’ve encountered this kind of money, know that the PIF fucking sucks, as does the man running it, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. As Ian wrote just last month:Saudi Arabia spent the last year throwing money around the video gam...

10May

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Gaming

EA Is Once Again Developing A Lord Of The Rings Video Game

Image: EAI know licensing isn’t the sexiest topic, but when it comes to certain properties—like Star Wars and major sports—it plays a super important role in what games we get to play and who makes them. Which is my way of explaining why I’m writing about the surprise announcement that EA is making its first Lord of the Rings game since 2006.For all the shit people talk about EA in 2022, most of it for good reason, the publisher had a run in the 00's where they released a number of excellent Lord of the Rings games, like the brawler movie tie-ins, the cult Battle for Middle Earth series of strategy games and Third Age, a Final Fantasy clone that is a lot better than most people ever gave it credit for.So there’s a weird sense of nostalgia attached to the announcement today that, with the s...