EA scraps Casual publishing label

By Robert Purchese Published 7 November, 2008

As market "defies a single genre".

EA has decided to bin its standalone Casual label, according to a statement.

The Casual Label will, along with the Hasbro partnership, be merged with The Sims Label. And this exciting new venture will be given the punchy name of the Sims and Casual Label.

Kathy Vrabeck, who lead the initiative, has subsequently left the company. Her departure comes as 600 others were laid off at the company last week, when EA set about fixing the USD 310 million net loss sustained during the financial quarter.

EA divided into four publishing units - Games, Casual, Sims, Sports - back in June 2007. EA Casual was responsible for wonderful Wii game Boom Blox, as well as titles such as Harry Potter, Monopoly, Littlest Pet Shop and some mobile games.

EA All-Play, incidentally, is the Wii-focused EA Sports label. We were confused about this; this and a lot of other things.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (12) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • el_pollo_diablo #1 3 years ago

    It was only around for about a week, surely?
    Edited by 1 at 07/11/08 @ 17:36

  • DFawkes #2 3 years ago

    I'm getting fed up of these occasional lapses into common sense from EA.

    EDIT: How did I manage so many spelling mistakes in one sentence?
    Edited by 1 at 07/11/08 @ 17:40

  • michaelius #3 3 years ago

    Don't try to find any common sense in big corporations structures. It's absolutly pointless task.

  • penhalion #4 3 years ago

    So EA have realised that simply giving a game the title of casual doesn't actually make it a casual game. Muppets!

  • Shakey_Jake33 #5 3 years ago

    The problem with explicitely labelling a game as 'casual' is that it almost excludes the (lack of better term) 'core' from the get-go, implying that they are different kinds of games for a different audience.

  • Silvervein #6 3 years ago

    This story reminds me of that old tale of five blind men trying to describe an elephant by touching him.
    How does that connect to EA? EA suits know only one thing about games: that they make money from them. Just listen to what they said when they announced that kotor mmo. So, does it come as a surprise that people clueless about the games make some strange decisions regarding games?

  • Triggerhappytel #7 3 years ago

    So they haven't scrapped it at all, but re-named it?

  • Les #8 3 years ago

    "EA suits know only one thing about games: that they make money from them."

    Not in the last quarter... ;)

  • knightmt #9 3 years ago

    EA is becoming a bit of a monolith, if it does not retain a bit of identity between groups,
    it is going to become very unpopular. Big institutions may have shed loads of cash,
    but they are slow to adapt and can be blind, look at Sony and MS.

  • Doctor_What #10 3 years ago

    600 people gone? Blimey. That's a serious amount of lives screwed up.

    EA have always had too much middle-management, so perhaps that's not entirely developers out on their heels, but it's still a huge amount of people who are now looking for new jobs just before Christmas... Again.

    EA did this at the same time last year. John Riccitello seems to only know one tactic for improving his share prices: laying people off.

  • chrisjm #11 3 years ago

    a loss in a 1/4, no doubt followed by huge profits in the 1/4 with christmas in.... why not wait on yearly results before sacking everyone?

    oh and the shaun white advert.... DIE
    Edited by 1 at 10/11/08 @ 10:01

  • HammyWammy #12 3 years ago

    ... ... ... ... ... ... Meh!