EA has reportedly laid off over 200 contract QA testers at its Baton Rouge, Louisiana office - the vast majority of its Apex Legends QA team - during an unscheduled Zoom call this morning.
According to Kotaku, QA testers were informed they were losing their jobs, effective immediately, during a mandatory Zoom meeting held at 8am CT by their contracting agency Magnit Global. Sources told the site that EA's whole Baton Rouge QA team has now been disbanded as a result of the call, amounting to what one former employee called "essentially their entire Apex Legends QA staff" on Twitter.
In a statement provided to Kotaku, EA did not comment on the layoffs directly, but did confirm changes at its Baton Rouge office. "As part of our ongoing global strategy," the publisher wrote, "we are expanding the distribution of our Apex Legends testing team and ending testing execution that's been concentrated in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, impacting services provided by our third-party provider."