Fifa 17 firm gets €1m jobs grant from IDA

The IDA has provided more than €1.1m in employment grants in little over a year to the expanding Irish arm of game giant, Electronic Arts (EA).  

EA, the firm behind the mega-selling Fifa 17 game, has a base in Galway with some of the most enviable jobs in the multinational sector, where the firm's quality assurance team tests the latest games before they go on general release.

New accounts for Electronic Arts Ireland Ltd show that in the 2016 fiscal year, the IDA provided employment grants of €496,000 and followed up in June of this year with a further €608,000 in employment grants.

Numbers employed by the firm in the 53 weeks to the end of April 2 of this year increased from 307 to 365.

Further committing the business to Galway, the directors state that in April of this year, the firm signed a three-year contract extension for a data centre rental and future payments under the deal will amount to €4.12m.

Last year, revenues at the company increased by 6pc to €23.4m. However, a €2m jump in administrative expenses resulted in the business slipping into the red to record a pre-tax loss of €11,000.

EA recorded 1.5 billion hours played in the first 16 days of release of its Fifa 16 game.

From Irish Independent (21/11/2016)