Home Forums #IrishGameDev in the News 300 new jobs at EA Galway

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    • #8544
      Anonymous
      Inactive
    • #48957
      Aphra K
      Keymaster

      good news.

      they open up in galway and close in dublin. thats business I guess.

      Aphra

    • #48963
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      While it’s fantastic to see more jobs arriving in Galway I’m not sure what these call centres do for the game industry as a whole.

    • #48965
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Well it’s 300, probably, low skill jobs to offset the 60 odd highly skilled jobs that EA have just axed in PopCap. EA have already publicly stated that they’ll be recruiting from abroad because they need people with specific language skills. The EA spokesperson even went as far as to say that this would help make Galway a ‘more multi cultural city’.
      IDA will also be part funding this from John and Jane Q Irish taxpayers contributions. So all in all, I’d say this is irrelevant (not games jobs) or worse case, bad (less IDA money for foreign development studios coming here to access) for the games industry here.

      Though any newsagents, bars, renting agencies, drug dealers etc. in the vicinity will see a small boost in their traffic. Hooray! :/

    • #48966
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      @Roganski – Hear, hear.

      It is all tech support jobs. Looked to see if they were hiring coders and they aren’t.

    • #48984
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      While I agree with the sentiment I think it’s important to bear in mind that numbers employed in the sector could have a bearing on future government/EI/IDA policy in relation to games. If numbers are on the up as a sector, regardless of the large scale investment being in call centres/localisation, then it makes further investment in the sector more appealing and allows for grants like the CSF for smaller indies.

      Hopefully these smaller companies can grow into something bigger and generate development jobs within the country in time.

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