On Wednesday, EA laid off 300-400 employees, which seems to have affected many studios.In addition to Rebirth Studio, Codemasters has also recently confirmed the news of layoffs.
On the evening of Thursday (May 1), Codemasters issued a statement announcing the termination of cooperation with WRC and will no longer develop rally racing games in the future.
Recently, Codemasters confirmed to foreign media VGC that the studio has now confirmed that it will lay off employees and reassign employees to other areas of EA Sports as much as possible.
"As a business, we are constantly evolving to meet the growing demands of our players and increase focus on our entire lineup. This prompted us to consider reducing some positions while redeploying as many as possible to our strategic priorities."
We are constantly adjusting to meet the growing demands of our players and focus more on our portfolio.This leads to the need to streamline some positions while redeploying employees to our strategic focus areas where possible.”
Codemasters is doing the same thing as Rebirth Studio: layoffs, putting people and resources into games that generate revenue and profits.Rebirth Studio canceled two games in this round of layoffs, one of which is said to be a Titanfall spin-off game.Codemasters has just said goodbye to the "WRC" series.
In early 2021, EA acquired Codemasters for $1.2 billion, beating a previously accepted offer made by Rockstar parent company Take-Two.
The acquisition will licensing Codemasters' "F1" and "FIA World Rally Championship" as well as its own IPs "Super Rally", "Dust" and "Racing Plan" under EA, along with EA's "Need for Speed" and "Hot" series.
When discussing the strategic reasons behind the deal before the deal is completed, EA said it would create a “global leader in racing entertainment” and enable it to “can release new racing experiences every year.”
In 2022, Codemasters' Cheshire-based Dust 5 team was incorporated into another UK-based EA studio, Criterion Games, to "create the future of Need for Speed".
It is reported that some of Codemasters' recent works in the F1 and WRC series have been underperformed commercially.
