Battlefield 6 was 'the biggest launch in franchise history.' 6 months later, EA is laying off people who made it

Six months after the successful release of Battlefield 6, which sold more than seven million copies in just three days and was among the top-selling games of 2025, Electronic Arts has confirmed that an unknown number of employees have been laid off from the studios that made the game, including Criterion, Dice, Ripple Effect, and Motive.

"We’ve made select changes within our Battlefield organization to better align our teams around what matters most to our community," an EA spokesperson said in a statement supplied to PC Gamer. "Battlefield remains one of our biggest priorities, and we’re continuing to invest in the franchise, guided by player feedback and insights from Battlefield Labs."

IGN, which first reported the layoffs, said the cuts reflect a "realignment" across Battlefield studios as the development shifts focus to maintaining the game's live service support. That transition arguably hasn't gone smoothly: like many games, Battlefield 6 isn't as popular as it was at launch, and some of that falloff can be attributed to EA postponing its season 2 content in January, as well as the arrival of ARC Raiders less than three weeks after it launched in October. Since then, the studio has continued to focus on plans to improve the game.

Battlefield 6 peaked in November with 22.5 million monthly active users (in 37 markets) across all platforms, according to data from Newzoo, PC Gamer's official data partner. The shooter drew 8.98 million MAU in January of this year, according to Newzoo, the 10th most popular game by that metric, making it played by more people in January than games like League of Legends, Rainbow Six Siege X, Marvel Rivals, and Apex Legends.

Electronic Arts is also under pressure arising from its looming acquisition by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, a move that game industry unions and some US lawmakers have worried will lead to widespread layoffs as the company is taken private.

There's no getting around the ugly reality of the game industry that maintaining a game can be handled by a much smaller team than what's required to actually make one. But EA also reportedly said in 2025 that it expected Battlefield 6 to pull in 100 million players, an extremely ambitious goal that not even its developers believed was achievable. If that target was ultimately missed, management may see an opportunity to justify becoming "more agile," to use a popular catchphrase of the suits, much as it did with BioWare following the release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

Whatever the rationale, these layoffs are just the latest demonstration that, as we said in 2025, making a good, successful game is no guarantee of job security.