Dave Roberts and Jason Kapalka from PopCap, Alex Ward and Fiona Sperry of Criterion, and Chillingo founders Chris Byatte and Joe Wee all decided to leave EA for something new – within a week’s time.
From an outsider’s perspective, that looks like some strange timing, but EA CEO Andrew Wilson stressed during a recent earnings call that it was nothing but happenstance.
"As a company we're a creative organization. I came up through the creative side of the organization and I still have a deep passion for bringing in new creative talent and keeping our talent, but also as part of a creative industry people come and go for all kinds of different reasons,” Wilson explained. “You've seen some recently have left and these changes happened to be announced in a short window, which was more coincidental than anything and there definitely was no connection between their departures.”
The last thing EA needs is another stain on its image. The publisher has been voted America’s worst company for two straight years, so when a handful of important people leave, the audience assumes something else is going wrong.
"EA as an organization, we've got over 8,000 amazingly talented and creative people and we'd love to see these people have the opportunity to step up and lead our studios – guys like John Vechey at PopCap, Matt Webster at Criterion and Ed Rumley at Chillingo have all been at their respective studios for a long time and bring a lot of energy and enthusiasm and new creative thinking to their roles,” he continued. “These studios all have exciting work underway…"
