Apex Legends QA testers reportedly fired over Zoom call

EA disbands entire team at Baton Rouge office

Marco Wutz | Mar 1, 2023

Apex Legends QA testers reportedly fired over Zoom call /

EA fired 200 QA testers for Apex Legends at its office in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on February 28, 2023, with immediate effect, Kotaku reports. The employees were informed of this during a Zoom call with their contracting agency.

In effect, this move disbands the entire QA team at the office, which took even local supervisors by surprise. The former QA testers will receive 60 days of severance pay.

The Baton Rouge office has assisted with QA testing Apex Legends since 2019, helping to get the popular battle royale game ready for its spectacular debut. Testers there were able to build up a lot of training and expertise on the game in the years since then, which might well be felt by players in future versions of the game.

EA stated towards Kotaku, that this move is “part of our ongoing global strategy” as it's looking to end the concentration of QA testing for Apex Legends in Baton Rouge in favor of having a team that’s more widely distributed.

“Our global team, inclusive of remote playtesters across the U.S., enables us to increase the hours per week we’re able to test and optimize the game and reflects a commitment to understand and better serve our growing community around the world,” the statement continued.

There have been a few other cost-cutting measures by EA recently such as the cancellation of Apex Legends Mobile and Battlefield Mobile.

Apex Legends recently launched Season 16: Revelry, which made some fundamental changes to the title’s gameplay.

Published Mar 1, 2023

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg