Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier.bsky.social)
bsky.app
It’s official: EA is going private. The leveraged buyout will be financed by a staggering $20 billion of debt, which likely means some *aggressive* cost cutting is ahead for EA in the coming months and years. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250929186526/en/EA-Announces-Agreement-to-be-Acquired-by-PIF-Silver-Lake-and-Affinity-Partners-for-%2455-Billion

In a deal involving a company owned by Jared Kushner, a company that is basically just the Saudis, and $20B of debt.

  • mohab@piefed.socialEnglish
    2343·
    4 days ago

    Saudi owning FIFA is hilarious seeing most of its profit comes from gambling. Muslims my ass 😂 Not that they ever practiced what they preached anyway—Islam or not, religion has always been nothing but a tool of oppression to rulers.

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
      361·
      4 days ago

      It would be interesting if EA pulled away from lootboxes for their owner’s ideological reasons.

    • False@lemmy.worldEnglish
      20·
      4 days ago

      Maybe they’ll remove the gambling. Probably not but it would be good if they did.

      • kameecoding@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        4 days ago

        Didn’t as much lose it as they called FIFA (an organization worse than EA)'s bluff when FIFA wanted like a billion for the naming rights.

    • Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2·
      4 days ago

      Why do people always connect saudi to Islam when it’s pretty obvious no muslim other than Saudis likes the Saudi family as they are infamous for their practises. While even a slight hint at israel and Judaism or rich jewish assholes with judaism would get you down voted to the ground even when it’s an appropriate callout.

      Edit: I am not challenging the comment, i am just curious as to why. One reason I could think of is that jews are considered an ethnic group so they may not be religious at all but that could apply to any religion no?

    • kadaverin0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      41·
      4 days ago

      The religious skirting around the doctrines of their faith for personal gain is a feature, not a bug.

    • andros_rex@lemmy.worldEnglish
      22·
      4 days ago

      The only part of the religion that matters is the part that lets them treat women as sex slaves anyways.

  • JakenVeina@midwest.socialEnglish
    841·
    4 days ago

    Oh, cool, another buyout where the buyer doesn’t have to actually pay for it, they just take out a loan and magically make the company pay for it.

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.worldEnglish
    18·
    3 days ago

    Good riddance. I hope by “private” they mean we won’t hear from them again–they’re a very private company, they keep to themselves, and never say anything. That sort of private.

    (I know that’s not what it means)

      • Colonel_Panic_@eviltoast.orgEnglish
        8·
        3 days ago

        I downloaded every EA game ever made and I don’t even want to play any of them. I have the files imprisoned on my computer, forever. Bwahahaha!

        • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          23·
          4 days ago

          Due to Steam’s Autumn Sale putting the DLC anywhere from 30-50% off, you can currently get the complete game for the low price of only… $993.79.
          I wish I was kidding.
          Screenshot of the Steam store page, showing the “Add All DLC to Cart” button with a total of $993.79. Most of the DLC is priced down anywhere from 30 to 50%.

          • Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            6·
            3 days ago

            And It won’t run.

            So many of these DLCs are outright broken. For instance, the For Rent pack very well will corrupt your save file. I’ve had a glitch happen that was a for rent glitch, and I don’t even have the pack. Dine out doesnt function, my wedding stories doesn’t function. The game is still bland with $1000 of DLC.

            It’s so bad, they added a toggle to turn off “unused packs” that break your game. You can now just uninstall them through the UI. Stuff you paid for, you can turn it off now, so your game runs more smoothly. Except, when It rolled out, it broke people’s games when they tried to use it, said they didn’t own the pack anymore, so you couldn’t turn a pack back on. Absurd.

            Fuck The Sims 4, Fuck EA.

            Rust console, is an old game, they released a new version to upgrade to new systems. Free to people who already owned the first gen game. They did this well imo. EA could never.

              • Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                11·
                3 days ago

                Or just find a better game. There are plenty of games where you’re not expected to pay and download additional files to have rain.

                • NoodlePoint@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  11·
                  3 days ago

                  The Command and Conquer series has only a few or no equivalent right now, as far as I know.

                  There is INZOI, which should be superior to the Sims series, but its hardware requirements are very demanding.

                  Despite the existence of superior racing sims, some people still play NFSU2 but enhanced with mods.

                  I’m saying because in some places people like the games more than the corporation owning those titles (and sitting on, while keep on selling the games with the loot boxes), they’ll just pirate those copies.

        • Lemminary@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          4 days ago

          Oh yeah, they milked that shit as much as they could. Really ruined the franchise with their bullshit.

        • chiliedogg@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          3 days ago

          The franchise basically created the microtransaction.

          As much flak as Oblivion got for horse armor, the Sims did it first.

  • thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    322·
    4 days ago

    EA has basically been dead to me for a very long time, even though I know a couple of people who work there.

    While the whole Saudi Arabia / Private Equity angle is terrible, part of me thinks/hopes/wishes that this is part of their whole sports-washing angle - and there is a slim but non-0 chance that there will be an improvement in the quality of their studio output over the next few years.

    I’ll continue to avoid buying their games, but it would be nice to see those that still do not getting nickel-and-dimed as hard as they currently are.

    Who knows, there is also the potential that this buyout backfires and Saudi’s human rights abuses become even more public knowledge as a result?

    When times are as bad as they currently are, we have to hope.

  • Chaotic Entropy@feddit.ukEnglish
    40·
    4 days ago

    I couldn’t be ​more ​excited about ​what’s ​ahead,” said Jared Kushner, Chief Executive Officer of Affinity Partners.

    Because it just wouldn’t be a story without a Trump family angle.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
      5·
      4 days ago

      It saves so much time for him to be buying a failed company. It cuts out all the leg work he has to do.

      If a company bought EA it would make sense if they were buying it for the IP. Someone who actually knows how to run a business could probably turn it around, but why is he buying it does he have another game studio that I’m not aware of?

  • architect@thelemmy.clubEnglish
    59·
    4 days ago

    Surely gamers will find it within themselves once in their lives to actually not buy garbage from a country that doesn’t even want them alive. Surely gamers, even though they’ve never been able to find it with themselves before, will somehow figure out how to do the right thing for once in their lives And not fund this shit country.

    Surely this is the line in the sand.

    Who the fuck am I kidding?

    • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.worldEnglish
      102·
      4 days ago

      How many gamers bought Veilguard?

      EDIT: I just checked and it looks like the only game EA released since Veilguard that was targeting the general gaming audience (i.e. wasn’t a sports game, a Sims expansion or a mobile game) was Split Fiction. Battlefield 6 will be out in a couple of weeks so we’ll see how that does.

    • Skullgrid@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      4 days ago

      Let’s say gamers do that. The average EA/“Fifa” buyer will see the box art with Messi/Whoever and buy the fucking game.

  • expatriado@lemmy.worldEnglish
    641·
    4 days ago

    going private with debt is a sign of upcoming bankruptcy, possibly dissolution. but with Kushner and the Saudis, probably more a sign of money laundering

    • someguy3@lemmy.worldEnglish
      263·
      4 days ago

      Nah the Saudis are desperate to diversify. And they have the money to do it. I know it’s leveraged but they’ll see it through.