EA has closed PopCap’s Dublin division.

96 people have been affected by the decision, PopCap said in a statement. They have, however, been "provided outplacement support and many employees have offers in other parts of PopCap, at EA or new opportunities with technology partners in Ireland."

The closure of the studio, which EA had acquired in 2011 for $650 million, with an additional $100 million stock option, follows statements made by EA Labels boss Frank Gibeau, who suggested that recent lay-offs at PopCap’s Seattle and Dublin studios were due to 'duplicative’ roles. He also said the lay-offs occured due to a shift in focus to the growing mobile market.

"Typically at EA what we do when we acquire a company is we make sure that we go slow initially and really understand the culture of the company. And then we look for whether there’s opportunities to integrate the companies – and then we accelerate.

"So with PopCap, what we found is that there are some areas inside PopCap that were duplicative what EA was doing; a lot of central resources, legal, business affairs those types of things so we accelerated the integration there."

The creator of Plants vs. Zombies had been laid off by EA following the announcement of Plants vs. Zombies 2.

All the best to those affected with the studio's closure.