Less than a month after Electronic Arts announced that it is being acquired by an investor consortium comprised of PIF (Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund), Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, reports are now coming up of the employees urged to make use of AI for “just about everything”. According to Business Insider, several EA staff members spoke about this under the condition of anonymity.
It is worth noting that EA leadership has been asking employees to use AI for around a year, well before the company announced its acquisition. The leadership has asked employees to use AI for several functions, from generating code while programming a game to generating concept art. Even middle managers have been asked to use AI tools to get advice on how they can talk to the workers under them about subjects like promotions.
To accomplish this, the company has been asking employees to undergo multiple training courses about AI, with subjects including how AI-based tools can be used to accelerate work, and how generative AI can be used as a “thought partner”, according to internal documents acquired by Business Insider. Some allegedly available tools include an in-house chatbot named ReefGPT. However, employees have also noted that these tools have been producing “flawed code and other so-called hallucinations” that they then have to spend more time correcting.
One employee, who was laid off earlier this year and formerly a part of the Respawn Entertainment QA team, spoke about being let go because these AI tools were able to review and summarise feedback received from playtesters. He believes this is the reason for being laid off (alongside around 100 other employees).
Rumours started coming up shortly after the acquisition was announced that EA would be looking at streamlining its game development process by using AI-based tools. These AI tools are expected to fulfill several parts of the company’s game development pipelines, which could result in layoffs.
Considering the amount of debt that EA has taken on itself to fund its acquisition, this focus on employees using AI likely stems from the company planning further cutbacks to its workforce down the line. Analysts have also been predicting that the company will likely start focusing on games it believes to be surefire hits to guarantee higher revenue. Kantan Games analyst Serkan Toto believes that it will lead to “an even stronger focus on evergreen IPs, blockbuster (fewer but potentially bigger games) and live services – at the expense of riskier projects, new ideas and innovation.”
New York University Stern School of Business professor and industry researcher Joost Van Dreunen spoke about the possibility of the company doubling down on its sports franchises, which make up a large percentage of its earnings. He also called into question the valuation of EA as part of the $55 billion buyout, noting that the company has “little growth potential” to justify the value.