EA Mobile senior vice president Mike Verdu resigns

Electronic Arts senior vice president Mike Verdu has resigned from the company, GamesBeat has learned. That’s a significant departure for one of the world’s biggest makers of mobile games.

We received a tip that Verdu has resigned and both Verdu and a spokesman for EA have confirmed it. Verdu said that he will leave EA effective the first week in May.

Verdu joined EA Mobile in February 2017, after he left Kabam in the wake of its sale to Netmarble and FoxNext Games.

Verdu previously served as chief creative officer at Zynga. During three years at Zynga, he had worked closely with teams that worked on titles, such as Empires & Allies, FrontierVille, and CastleVille. Before that, he ran the Los Angeles studio for Electronic Arts and worked on the Command & Conquer franchise, The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-earth, and Medal of Honor.

Verdu also worked at Atari, where he worked on Unreal II and Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time, and he was cofounder of Legend Entertainment, where he worked on Spellcasting, Gateway, Companions of Xanth, Death Gate, Mission Critical, and Sword of Shannara.

EA announced a major reshuffling of executives on Thursday, but a spokesman said Verdu’s departure is unrelated to the management changes.

In a message, Verdu said, “I hired some great people into my leadership team and am able to transition gracefully.”

He said that the travel related to the job was tough, and his commute was also not sustainable.

Verdu added, “Was awesome to go back to EA and help out their mobile organization. It felt like closing a circle (as you know I worked there before).”