After leaving the company last month, former Battlefield director Marcus Lehto has said he doesn’t have “anything positive to say about EA.”
At the end of February, it became apparent that Lehto had left Ridgeline Games, the studio he co-founded that was specifically made to work on the Battlefield franchise. It wasn’t particularly clear why he left at the time, though considering days later EA announced that it was laying off 5% of its staff, with Ridgeline Games winding down as a standalone studio. Lehto’s presence on Twitter has been noticeably quiet since his departure, but earlier this week he did comment on the layoffs with an understandably scathing comment directed at EA.
“Not been saying much here since I don’t have anything positive to say about EA,” Lehto said, continuing on to say, “my recent departure, and how so many, including my team, are suffering due to the industry sweeping layoffs.” Given that that 5% of staff accounts for around 670 people, I think Lehto’s comment is pretty reasonable – especially when you take into consideration EA had already made 6% of its staff redundant in March 2023.