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.

    • P03 Locke@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      133·
      28 days ago

      Going private could have been a net positive. But, not from venture capitalists, and certainly not from the Saudis.

      Also, taking on this much debt as part of the buyout is just asking to be gutted and carved out, complete with record-breaking layoffs.

  • mohab@piefed.socialEnglish
    2023·
    28 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.

    • sdcSpade@lemmy.zipEnglish
      511·
      28 days ago

      Instead of lootboxes, you cut open journalists to get your prizes.

    • False@lemmy.worldEnglish
      18·
      28 days ago

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

      • kameecoding@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        28 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·
      27 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
      31·
      28 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·
      28 days ago

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

  • expatriado@lemmy.worldEnglish
    58·
    28 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

    • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.worldEnglish
      233·
      28 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.

  • architect@thelemmy.clubEnglish
    53·
    28 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?

    • Skullgrid@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      28 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.

    • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.worldEnglish
      82·
      28 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.

        • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          20·
          28 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
            3·
            27 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·
                27 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
                  1·
                  27 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
          4·
          28 days ago

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

            • Konraddo@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              27 days ago

              Well, their artists did make additional assets though, even if they may be recoloured versions.

              • DacoTaco@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                27 days ago

                And…? Cyberpunk, monster hunter, witcher, … All got visual updates in their lifetimes :p

                Witcher, baldurs gate, monster hunter, gta5 and more got actual content updates too

        • chiliedogg@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          27 days ago

          The franchise basically created the microtransaction.

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

  • MHLoppy@fedia.io
    381·
    28 days ago

    This is a genuine question and not a passive aggressive one: why make the submission a link to a social media post when that post is mostly just a link to a news site anyway? (you could include link to or even quote the commentary either in the submission body or a comment if you think it’s a valuable addition)

    edit: has since been answered in another comment orz, I opened this and then was talking to people for a while before commenting

    • simple@piefed.socialEnglish
      12·
      28 days ago

      The post replies also provide more context as someone that doesnt understand the legal lingo of the official article

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      28 days ago

      To add to this, Jason Schreier is a well known, and well sourced, gaming journalist.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Schreier

      But you aren’t wrong. There’s no way to know that via Bluesky unless you’ve happen to read his stuff from Bloomberg and before. It’s almost like Twitter is a terrible format for news or something…

  • Chaotic Entropy@feddit.ukEnglish
    33·
    28 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
      4·
      28 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?

  • ABetterTomorrow@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    32·
    28 days ago

    Huge fucking yikes on the privacy side of things, if you didn’t learn from the other 100 negatives about this company…. Enjoy fucking yourself and the world. Stop feeding evil.

  • mrfriki@lemmy.worldEnglish
    29·
    28 days ago

    I’m surprised that there isn’t any government organization that controls or oversees this kind of buyout, especially when so many billions are involved.

  • thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    262·
    28 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.