EA’s top execs earned $60m in the fiscal year 2024, despite the company laying off hundreds of employees.
In particular CEO Andrew Wilson earned just under half that number himself – $25.6m – and was praised for executing on “key strategic and operating objectives”.
Those objectives include reorganising the business into EA Entertainment and EA Sports; “optimising our portfolio, investments and resources in support of our strategic priorities and growth initiatives” as part of a restructuring plan; progressing the company’s “long-term strategy plan focused on driving durable growth, strong cash flow and stockholder returns”; and overseeing a “year of continued employee satisfaction scores above industry benchmarks”, which included “record high talent retention”.
These numbers come courtesy of an annual Proxy Statement, which details the compensation of EA’s execs, as spotted by Game Developer.
Breaking it down, Wilson earned $1.3m from his basic salary, plus over $20m in stock awards, just under $3.5m from a non-equity incentive plan, and $500k in “other” compensation. This, in total, was around $5m more than in 2023 and 2022.
Elsewhere Laura Miele, president of EA Entertainment, technology and central development, earned a total of $12m, acknowledging her assumed leadership of EA Entertainment and overseeing the Star Wars Jedi: Survivor launch, among other achievements.
Meanwhile CFO Stuart Canfield earned a total of $6.5m, among others.
At the very least, it’s a stark indication of the amount of money earned at the top of the games industry.
By contrast, the median employee earned $148,704 in compensation, meaning Wilson earned 172 times more than the average EA employee.
You can read the full report here.
Back in February, EA laid off five percent of its staff, amounting to around 670 employees. Wilson said at the time the cuts were part of a continuing effort to “optimise our global real estate footprint to best support our business”.
These cuts followed a previous round of “restructuring” in March 2023, which impacted six percent of the workforce (over 750 people).
Games industry layoffs have surpassed 10,000 for 2024 so far, which is almost as many that were impacted in 2023 in less than half the time.