Electronic Arts plans to lay off as many as 100 employees across its offices in Austin, Texas and Galway, Ireland, Kotaku reported Wednesday.
Staff affected currently support live operations on FIFA 22 among other games. Their work included providing email, chat and phone support for players experiencing problems in-game. That work will now be outsourced.
EA Vice President of Customer Experience Joel Knutson told staff about the layoffs via email, saying they would help "reduce complexity and increase our efficiency, flexibility and scalability."
The layoffs reportedly follow efforts by employees to lobby for higher pay after annual raises failed to outpace inflation â an alleged increase of only $0.10 more per hour.
EA confirmed the layoffs to Kotaku via email.
"The changes in our customer support function are not tied to any one gaming franchise, nor are they connected to our EA SPORTS FC announcement last week," a representative told Kotaku. "The customer support function support a wide range of player questions pertaining to our gaming titles, technology, including Origin or our EA Play subscription service."
EA will replace these roles with 10 new jobs for customer service support on mobile games, for which the laid-off employees can apply.
