EA CEO Andrew Wilson got a nice pay bump last year, while the company’s workers earned less on average
Congrats, Andrew! You’re almost certainly not reading this, but regardless, it’s only polite for me to offer you a big well done, Mr Wilson. After all, you, EA’s CEO, were paid $30.5 million (around £22 million) in the financial year just gone, nearly $5 million (around £3.6 million) than you were the one before that.
Meanwhile, the company’s full-time workers only took home $117,000 (around £85k) on average, down from $149,000 (around £108k) in 2024, and the lowest since 2022, which saw EA employees earn $116,000 (around £84.5k) according to the average EA used. In order to illustrate just how huge the gulf between the cash given to Wilson per year and the median pay of the people under him who actually do the work, Game File’s Stephen Totilo has made a hugely stretched graph that’s well worth checking out if you want a good laugh followed by a big sigh.
EA opted to use the median rather than the mean to calculate that average salary among its staff in its latest proxy statement. Basically, they pulled the middle salary number from the bunch, rather than adding them all together and dividing by the total number of salaries included. Hello, secondary school maths.
Wilson’s $30 milion in cash and stock during the 12 months that drew to a close on March 31 was up on the $26 million he earned the year before that, and his biggest windfall since taking home $39 million in 2021. Time for a new yacht, methinks. And during a period that saw EA lay off a bunch of staff.
His base salary of $1.3 million (about £947k) was the same as it has been since at least 2023, with $25.7 million (around £18.7 million) in stock awards, $2.8 million (around £2 million) via a non-equity incentive plan, and $678,000 (around £494k) in “other compensation” bringing his pay up to that $30 million total. The vast majority of the bump came from his stock increasing to that new number from just over $20 million (around $14.5 million) in 2024.
As noted by Game Developer, it wasn’t just Wilson getting more money either. All four of the other top execs EA listed individual pay numbers for in the proxy statement containing this data recieved increases by either a little or a lot compared to their 2024 totals.
Congrats to all of them! Stuart Canfield, Laura Miele, Mala Singh, Jacob Schatz, you too! Well deserved millions, all of which should definitely have been given to just five people, who’ll need every last dime just to pay their bills.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
