EA layoffs show games support roles remain vulnerable, even at giants

Electronic Arts cut staff in Hyderabad, India and the United States on June 22, hitting recruitment, customer support, trust and safety, and IT. The reductions were at least EA's third layoff round in 2026, and they landed in the jobs that keep a publisher's hiring pipeline, player services, and internal systems moving long after a game ships.

EA had already cut workers in April 2025 after project cancellations at Respawn Entertainment. That history matters for people in Nintendo's business, support, and platform teams: the work closest to operations, not the marquee development teams, is often the first place a publisher looks when it wants to reshape costs.

The timing was awkward against EA's own financial and deal backdrop. On May 5, the company said fiscal 2026 net bookings reached a record $8.026 billion. EA is also under a September 2025 agreement to be acquired for about $55 billion by the Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners, a transaction shareholders approved in December. The consortium sought EU antitrust approval in Brussels on June 17, and a decision was expected by July 22.

The geography of the cuts matters as much as the job titles. Hitting Hyderabad and the United States at the same time shows how quickly a global game publisher can spread cuts across regions, trimming support and infrastructure work wherever it is easiest to move. For Nintendo, where long development cycles and tight quality standards depend on dependable back-office capacity, the message is that customer-facing and operations-heavy roles can look secure right up until a restructuring starts.