EA Executive Staff Declines Yearly Bonus to Add It to the General Bonus Pool

Nice guy EA copy Nintendo in shitty attempt to appear not shitty.

EA Executive Staff Declines Yearly Bonus to Add It to the General Bonus Pool

The top executives at Electronic Arts have turned down their yearly bonus pay for fiscal year 2019. According to documents filed with the United States Securities & Exchange Commission, CEO Andrew Wilson, CFO Blake Jorgensen, CTO Ken Moss, Marketing Officer Chris Bruzzo and former Chief Design Officer Patrick Soderlund have asked that the $5.5M bonus pay they were to receive be placed into the general bonus pool for all employees at EA.

Fiscal 2019 was a year of intense competition in the video game industry. While there were many achievements this year that we are proud of, after generating strong financial results and robust stockholder returns from fiscal 2014 through fiscal 2018, we did not perform to our expectations during fiscal 2019. Given the Company’s fiscal 2019 financial performance, and in order to maintain alignment with our pay-for-performance executive compensation philosophy, our CEO and his staff (including the NEOs) requested that they receive no performance cash bonus award for fiscal 2019.

The measure was accepted by the Compensation Committee with funds returned to the general bonus pool.

As a point of reference, in fiscal 2019, Andrew Wilson took home $18.2M in salary and compensation while the median employee salary is $92,000 (200:1).

lolol :P

Median salary is $92,000? Does that include his and others like him?

This is news? Or reddit karma boost?

Andrew Wilson got $18.2M last year.

Well, it has a drive-by teeny angst post, so I suppose it is.

Well spotted.

So the average employee makes $92,000 a year to cut/paste mostly sports games?

No one at EA has the right to complain and quite frankly the employees don’t deserve that bonus either.

@ajstyles: That's a short-sighted view. Executive compensation typically blows median salary for companies northward. Your typical art asset designer gets paid peanuts no matter how their senior management gets compensated.

Well they have still ruined Dead Space, Bioware and Star Wars.

I don't think the median salaries are affected that much. It's the average salaries that get skewed by the massive payouts at the top.

@uninspiredcup: I know his pay, I just want to know if they are including their payment in this median. Most likely they are but Hey! there maybe a slight chance that folks at his level aren't including in this median.

It (almost) doesn't matter. The median is not the same as the average. If there are 1000 people working at a company the median is what the guy making the 500th most is making (aka the middle salary). If a few guys at the absolute top makes tons it has very little effect on the median, that's why it's a useful metric.

We don't know if its matter or not because we don't know what the salaries are in the midrange. So, its odd for you to say with certainty that it doesn't matter. With that said, payscale.com has EA sports average salary at 92K and the inclusion of the top guys would definitively matter.

There are over 9000 people working at EA (i googled it). If including the top 50 or not should matter it would mean that the 4500th best paid should make a significantly different amount than the 4475th best paid, which is super unlikely.

If it is the average then you are correct that the top executives salaries are significant.

Game company execs aren't paid in line with game company workers, they're paid more like tech company execs. So when they say the median is 92,000/year, that is incredibly misleading. If the average pay is over the median, then it indicates most people get paid far less than 92,000/year.

"Median salary" is fluffing the numbers, it doesn't actually mean anything out of context.

@Shewgenja: Art asset designer should be paid peanuts for the lack of work they do in EA games.

Most of EA’s games are sports games which requires no art.

Then there is a couple kids games like plants vs zombies.

Then you have mirrors edge catalyst which is 99% white with no textures and some red lines to follow.

Like LMAO.

"But the franchises you love are either buried or ruined"
"And we're gonna start putting axe shower gel ads in your loading screens"

How brave of them.

With a humongous salary and several bonus payments taken earlier, I'd also have no problem in sitting one bonus payment out.