Another day, another studio hit with layoffs. This time it’s the UK-based developer Codemasters, who are most known for the F1, Dirt, and WRC franchises with their parent company EA. The video game corporation confirmed the layoffs, or redundancies, with IGN. However, they did not disclose just how many people were affected by this. “Our business is constantly changing as we strive to deliver amazing games and services that keep our players engaged, connected, and inspired,” an EA representative said to IGN.
Codemasters (Grid, Dirt Rally, F1) hit with layoffs.
EA bought Codemasters in 2021 for $1.2BN.https://t.co/NfVVh9VtrR pic.twitter.com/Ign7ExKPQf
— Knoebel (@Knoebelbroet) December 4, 2023
The representative continued, “At times, this requires the company to make small-scale organizational changes that align our teams and resources to meet evolving business needs and priorities. We continue to work closely with those affected by these changes, providing appropriate support throughout this process.” As we mentioned earlier, this is just another one of many studios have been going through an unfortunate round of layoffs in order to mitigate financial issues. Other company’s that were affected by layoffs for the year include Unity, Ascendant, Amazon Games, Bungie, and Media Molecule to name a few.
EA initially acquired Codemasters in late 2020, and at the time was considered a huge win for the corporation. In fact, Codemasters was more or less all set to be purchased by Take Two who made an initial offering of $973 million. A little more than a month later, EA gatecrashed the deal by going all in on the racing studio for an insane $1.2 billion. Soon after, the studio was made apart of the EA Sports umbrella. They released two titles this year, F1 23, and EA Sports WRC, both of which have been generally well received. 2023 has been a very rough year for video game studios, and we hope that the employees affected land on their feet sooner than later.