Tis’ a sad day in the EA worldwide offices, or a happy day depending on how you look at it. Longtime EA executive and DICE CEO (ie the devs who did the Battlefield games) Patrick Söderlund is leaving EA. There’s no major reason mentioned as to why he’s leaving.

Here’s the message about it from EA head honcho/human fist-bump-bro-dude-in-a-suit Andrew Wilson.

Today we are announcing that Patrick Söderlund has made the decision to move on from EA.  After nearly two decades as a pioneer for our company and industry, he will begin a new chapter later this year.

Patrick has been a trusted business partner and a great friend, and his inspiring leadership has had an outstanding impact on EA.  As an integral part of the management team for many years – including as head of Worldwide Studios and, most recently, Chief Design Officer – he’s been an agent of change and transformation.  From his early vision for Frostbite, which has now become a cornerstone for our technology strategy, to being a champion for Players First experiences, Patrick has always ensured we put creative at the center of everything we do.  He has also been unwavering in his commitment to building our pipeline of amazing new games to come, and his fingerprints will be on the experiences that we bring to players well into the future.

We wish Patrick the very best in his next life adventure, and we thank him for his many significant contributions.

And you read the earlier byline right; he made a lot of money just from his massive salary alone during the 2018 fiscal year, including US$46.3 million in stock awards. Most of that stock is US$20 million as an incentive to keep him around in EA according to SEC filings (via Kotaku).

Apart from being DICE’s CEO, he was also EA’s World Studio head honcho where he was in charge of making sure projects like Battlefield and FIFA made it off the ground.

Let’s cap off this piece of news with the stuff he’s said during his tenure as an EA suit.

On the female soldier criticism in Battlefield V

“We stand up for the cause, because I think those people who don’t understand it, well, you have two choices: either accept it or don’t buy the game. I’m fine with either or.”

On the Star Wars Battlefront II Loot-Box Fiasco

“When things don’t go as you thought they would, you have to be very humble towards what happened, take an honest approach with yourself and with the result, and try to do better next time. This was an example of change that didn’t work. There’s no getting away from the fact that we made some decisions that I think in hindsight we shouldn’t have made. Neither the developer nor [EA] intended to create a slot machine or take money from people, though that was the perception.”

On the closure of Visceral Games & that Star Wars project they were working on.

A development team from across EA Worldwide Studios will take over development of this game, led by a team from EA Vancouver that has already been working on the project. Our Visceral studio will be ramping down and closing, and we’re in the midst of shifting as many of the team as possible to other projects and teams at EA.

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Bringing new Star Wars games to life for every passionate fan out there is what drives us as creators. It’s what has inspired us to deliver the massive new Star Wars Battlefront II experience launching in just a few weeks.  It fuels our live service in Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes.  Making games in the extraordinary Star Wars universe is truly a dream for so many of us at EA, and we have so many more experiences to come for players on every platform.  We want to take the time to get each game right, to make it unique, to make it amazing.