Layoffs unrelated to Warhammer delay, says Mythic boss

EA Mythic's Mark Jacobs has told Eurogamer.net that company layoffs are not related to the delay of the Warhammer MMO.

Yesterday, while announcing its Q2 financial results, EA indicated that Warhammer would be released during the first half of fiscal year 2009. EA also announced that it would be closing its facility in Chertsey, England.

"It's absolutely unrelated," Jacobs said. "This is a question that's asked all the time, and I understand why - but in any course of development, there are going to be times when you let some people go. That's just what happens.

"The timing was unfortunate. We had some changes to make both within the UO team and the Warhammer team, at the same time that EA was also preparing layoffs."

Jacobs pointed out that EA Mythic includes the development teams on Warhammer, Camelot, and UO as well as customer service and IT. Looking at the layoffs across the entire studio, he said that the numbers were really small.

"[The layoffs] had no effect on the Warhammer schedule. Those layoffs had been talked about for quite a while within the studio, and really it just came up at the same time that EA was doing its layoffs," Jacobs explained.

The EA Mythic boss noted that this is the first time the studio has ever had such a large team working on one game.

"As we went along in the development of Warhammer, we found that you can't always add people and expect to have great results. We looked at that and went, okay, we need to make some changes - that's all," he said.

The full interview can be viewed here at our sister site, Eurogamer.net.