An EA studio in Guildford, Surrey, famous for the Burnout and Need for Speed racing games and now part of the team behind Battlefield.
Criterion Games is a video game studio in Guildford, Surrey, owned by Electronic Arts (EA). It is best known for fast, spectacular racing games: the Burnout series and several Need for Speed games, including Hot Pursuit, Most Wanted and Need for Speed Unbound. The studio has also helped on Star Wars Battlefront titles and the Firestorm mode in Battlefield V, and it worked on Battlefield 6, released in 2025. In August 2025 it was renamed Criterion, A Battlefield Studio.
The studio's own page says it wants to bring innovation, technical skill and bold design to Battlefield. It says it values collaboration, fresh ideas and different perspectives, and believes that healthy, engaged teams make better games. It also says it does not practise crunch, meaning long, exhausting overtime before a game launches. These are the studio's own statements.
Criterion has its roots in the 1990s. Canon set up Criterion Software in 1993, known for the RenderWare tools that many studios used to build games, and the games division began in January 1996. EA bought the company in 2004, and in 2007 the studio moved into a central Guildford building, in the same town as the wider EA UK team. Guildford is one of the UK's main game-making towns, so there are many other studios nearby. An older source gave about 90 staff in 2017; we did not find a current headcount. Criterion also has a place in games technology history: its RenderWare software was licensed by many studios around the world before EA stopped selling it commercially. In 2013 most of the team moved to a sister studio, Ghost Games, and the Guildford studio rebuilt itself, returning to Need for Speed in 2020. Five senior staff later left to found their own studio, Fuse Games, which shows how Guildford's game makers move between teams and start new ones.
The studio describes a workplace where people love games of all kinds, from tabletop to video, and it sets aside time each day for staff to play games and learn from them. It describes a modern, well-lit office with collaboration areas and soundproof booths, and says it has been named one of the UK's Best Places to Work four years in a row. These are the company's claims, so ask about them when you speak to the team. The studio's own page also says the team enjoys time to play, talk about and learn from other people's games, and that it values bringing different views into design discussions.
A studio like this employs programmers, artists, animators, designers, producers, audio staff, and testers, as well as people in studio operations. If you want to join one day, building small games of your own, learning a game engine and getting good at maths, art or writing are all useful ways to get ready. Follow Criterion and EA's UK pages for news of roles and events.
Website: www.ea.com/ea-studios/criterion-games
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