Wow, that's terrible. They laid off that many people just for some facebook dev? I like the new EA, but something like this is just impossible to support.

Let's just say that they've never been considered for my 401k portfolio.  I feel for the employees, though.

This is infuriating. Just when EA was starting to really create some memorable titles, they have to go and acquire some garbage social-networking game developer at the cost of developers from studios like Redwood, who created Dead Space. I'm not surprised by layoffs at Mythic, considering Warhammer didn't do that great, but still, this is awful. The casual market already has plenty of shovelware.

All of that for an indie facebook dev?

This is just wrong..

EA is retarded

They should have left the buy alone, I don't see how they'll make money on the aquisition in any way. They need to focus more on their internal networking instead of buying out. They're gonna get to be like companies that have such an evelated ego that they may eventually flop. Bad move in my opinion.

They should break up back into the many development teams they absorbed.  The teams were better by themselves and didn't have to worry about getting their employees cut when an overall conglomerate doesn't work out.  *cough* Bioware *cough*

Seems to be a common story nowadays, and a sad one at that. Especially so close to the holidays

why would ea fire 1500 people to buy some free to play facebook game developer?

All of you bashing this:

Have you seen how many people play those games? Sound decision in my book. Untapped markets for the win.

EA is going downhill. Thats just stupid to buy a free game on facebook and make over a thousand people suffer because of it. Companies like this only hurt the economy.

i feel bad for those employees, but business is business

boooo!!!!

this means less games!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As someone who was laid off by a residential homebuilding giant I have some insight to what those 1500 employees are feeling right now.  3 months before my layoff, which included 2500 other employees nationwide on that same day, the company I worked for spent $850 million rebranding their logo.  I also watched our CEO and other presidents of this and that buying and selling millions worth of our companies stock.  

One of the bad parts about working for a huge company is that you really just an expendable asset like a stapler.  Companies as large as Electronic Arts should realize that their actions and decisions have a direct effect on the economy that we are all living in.  The decision-makers at EA should be ashamed of themselves.  Although I seriously doubt their CEO is losing any sleep over the 1500 former employees that were cut loose.

With all the companies that EA is scooping up (e.g., Bioware and company), I can't say I'm surprised.

Jeff: Exactly. I'm not saying it's a good or bad decision. Just that it's a solid business move because it's an untapped market. I can't imagine how much money PlayFish makes from selling their premium access items and what not.

Also, thanks for pointing out that the lay offs weren't a direct relation to the purchase.

No matter how many good games EA makes, things like this are unforgivable. Period.

Thats really stupid, but they apparently have to do it, but I feel sorry for those people.