EA Scraps Its ‘Casual’ Label

In a somewhat surprising move to most of the gaming community, EA has decided to get rid of its casual gaming label. This comes as an attempt to recover from a financially disastrous quarter, in which they lost a net of $310 million. The Casual division, formed just over a year ago, barely had a chance to stretch its non-hardcore legs.

EA, before this decision, had four divisions: Sports, Sims, Casual and Games. What is currently the Casual division will now be merged with the Sims department (and this includes the Hasbro merger). In addition, the president of EA’s Casual division, Kathy Vrabeck, has stepped down, and over 600 employees were laid off as a result.

It is sad that so many lives were ruined in this decision. And when you consider the fact that the holiday season is coming up (and EA titles are usually popular during this time), it almost seems unnecessary. So they took a hit in one financial quarter; virtually all major businesses did due to the unstable economic situation. But I’m sure EA will be back on its feet soon enough. So why did they do this?

One reason EA has given is that casual gamers do not exist. Sort of.

In an email correspondence with GameDaily, an EA rep stated that: “We’ve learned a lot about casual entertainment in the past two years, and found that casual gaming defies a single genre and demographic.” So EA’s claim is that casual gamers play every genre, are every age, and are from both sexes. This is true enough. But just because casual gamers enjoy all types of games doesn’t mean that casual games don’t exist, right?

But that brings us to a whole new debate.

For now, though, this move seems bizarre. Scrapping an entire label before the holiday season seems to be extreme and unnecessary. But then again, who am I to say if it was right or wrong? We’ll see how it pans out for EA in the end…and those 600 people who lost their jobs in this strange turn of events.