Electronic Arts (EA) is laying off 350 people from multiple departments. This has proven to be one of the hardest years in gaming.

In an email received by Kotaku, EA boss Andrew Wilson said the goal would be to streamline decision-making in the marketing and publishing departments following a consolidation that began last year. Some offices are closed too such as the offices in Russia and Japan.

He wrote in the email, “We have a vision to be the World’s Greatest Games Company”. He also pointed out his concern. “If we’re honest with ourselves, we’re not there right now. We have work to do with our games, our player relationships, and our business.”

Wilson also said that the team is already taking action to improve their games and live services as well as their Frostbite engine.

EA sent a statement to Kotaku when they reached for a comment.

Today we took some important steps as a company to address our challenges and prepare for the opportunities ahead. As we look across a changing world around us, it’s clear that we must change with it. We’re making deliberate moves to better deliver on our commitments, refine our organization and meet the needs of our players.

As part of this, we have made changes to our marketing and publishing organization, our operations teams, and we are ramping down our current presence in Japan and Russia as we focus on different ways to serve our players in those markets. In addition to organizational changes, we are deeply focused on increasing quality in our games and services. Great games will continue to be at the core of everything we do, and we are thinking differently about how to amaze and inspire our players.

“This is a difficult day. The changes we’re making today will impact about 350 roles in our 9,000-person company. These are important but very hard decisions, and we do not take them lightly. We are friends and colleagues at EA, we appreciate and value everyone’s contributions, and we are doing everything we can to ensure we are looking after our people to help them through this period to find their next opportunity. This is our top priority.”

An EA representative assured that the company would provide severance.

One of the affected workers told Kotaku that this layoff has been expected since most of the hiring and travel freezes on marketing for several months. People within marketing and publishing had been expecting a reorganization since at least October, the person said. “I think some people will be relieved to not be in limbo anymore,” they said.

This news was received in a year with multiple major players in the gaming industry hit by layoffs, such as Activision Blizzard, Razer, Firemonkeys Studio, ArenaNet and NetEase. Some well-known stakeholders are affected too, like GOG.com.