EA Hits Third Wave of Layoffs in 2026 as Saudi Sale Looms & AI Praised Internally

Electronic Arts is once again making headlines for all the wrong reasons, announcing a third wave of layoffs in 2026 as the company hurtles toward a reported $55 billion leveraged buyout by Saudi Arabia. The latest round of cuts — affecting an unspecified number of staff — follows two previous waves of job losses earlier this year, painting a troubling picture of instability at one of the industry's biggest publishers. The timing has raised eyebrows across the games industry, with many questioning whether the restructuring is being driven by the impending acquisition rather than any genuine operational necessity.

Adding a jarring note of cognitive dissonance to the layoff news, EA's President of Enterprise Development Laura Miele took to the press this week to champion the role of artificial intelligence in the company's studios. Miele argued that AI tools have sparked "a real rise of creativity" at EA by eliminating "tedious tasks" from the development process, leading to "shorter, faster conversations around creativity and coming to alignment." While Miele's framing positions AI as a creative liberator, critics are likely to draw a direct line between the adoption of AI-assisted workflows and the repeated waves of human job losses — a tension that sits at the heart of a growing industry-wide debate about generative AI's true cost to game development workers.

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