EA going private for 52.5 billion USD

heywood on 29/9/2025 at 14:54

I heard on the news last night that Jared Kushner was involved in a deal to buy EA with Saudi money. Article from this morning:
(https://apnews.com/article/ea-electronic-arts-video-game-silver-lake-pif-d17dc7dd3412a990d2c0a6758aaa6900) https://apnews.com/article/ea-electronic-arts-video-game-silver-lake-pif-d17dc7dd3412a990d2c0a6758aaa6900

Damn, that's a lot of coin for a collection of sports game franchises. I'm not a big fan of private wealth buying public companies off the stock market and taking them private, especially if they are big companies and a lot of employees and customers are affected. I don't like the Saudi government owning our entertainment companies either. Boo!

demagogue on 29/9/2025 at 18:52

They know their core constituency. At least it'll help make transparent that, far from being unpolitical, gaming is about the most potent political force in the country right now, and no doubt it's about to get a lot more politicized. That side of it is probably better off discussed in CommChat though.

On the GenGaming side of the coin, I guess it's enough to say that I don't see this being at all good for gaming. But I've been alienated from EA games for a long time now anyway. The Need for Speeds are just okay, and beyond that I might have to go back to Mirror's Edge, and that was already a kind of fluke.

Tomi on 2/10/2025 at 02:54

Now that EA has officially killed the Dirt Rally series (or EA WRC), I don't care much about their games. If all goes well, this will turn out to be a terrible deal and their FIFAs and other franchises get knocked off the pedestal. I wouldn't mind playing a modern football game that is actually fun to play.

Jason Moyer on 2/10/2025 at 04:21

With or without this merger I wasn't really imagining any new EA titles that interested me. It's been a long time since that brief period where they were encouraging their in-house studios to create new things (I'm thinking what...2008?) and we got the full glory of cinematic-era Bioware (ME 1/2/3 and DA 1/2) and Mirror's Edge and Bad Company 2 plus some other games I don't personally care for but were at least interesting (Dead Space, etc.). They immediately pivoted to IP milking throughout the 2010's and games designed-by-marketing like all the other AAA companies so...who cares I guess. Kind of annoying they bought Codemasters and immediately killed them. I was never the biggest Codies fan but my game collection is better with DR/DR2/WRC in it and I think those guys were doing the best they could with the resources and limitations the marketing and executive guys placed on them.

Pyrian on 7/10/2025 at 00:02

Apparently, EA has taken on $20b in debt as part of the deal, which is going to stress their bottom line something fierce. People are expecting they might even sell off studios and IPs if they can get some coin for them, which EA has previously been reluctant to do.

Jason Moyer on 7/10/2025 at 02:46

It would be exciting if this were the first time the gaming industry got to experience a large company being taken over by an investment fund that's going to dump a pile of debt on them and then liquidate their assets. Like what's repeatedly happened in the retail sector. Playing with the big boys now.

Sulphur on 7/10/2025 at 10:44

Quote Posted by Pyrian

It's a leveraged buyout, so yeah, they're gonna have to pay it off or end up in a worse place than they ever were when public. EA being stripped for parts would kind of be ironic, but they've got some good studios under them still that I would hate to see fucked up. EA Motive, DICE, and Respawn all have a history of making decent to great shit (Battlefields notwithstanding), and there's whomever's left at Bioware as well. I'd want them to do well, but more likely than not we're gonna see them slapped into doing something not their forte, and then being punished for having the temerity to not exceed their overlords' expectations.

heywood on 7/10/2025 at 16:58

At first I was surprised how much EA was worth given they always seem to be restructuring. I knew EA execs were trying to get bought out in 2021 and 2022 after the COVID boom ended and Disney didn't extend their exclusive partnership. But I looked them up and they have good financials. They have been reliably profitable since the great recession and have about $1B annual net income. They have sports franchises that are naturally suited for annual updates, and a catalog of classic IPs they can keep marketing to gen-X and millenials into old age. So I figure this is like the Lucasfilm sale to Disney, and old EA favorites will be milked into oblivion like comic books. I'm guessing the long view of the IP's worth sold the Saudis, more than the steady financials.

The second and bigger thing that hit me was the buying power of state actors in the stock markets. EA is a global company with 14k employees spread around the world and is owned by a large number of different investment funds. It's in the NASDAQ 100 and S&P 500 indices. A lot of us probably own a stake in EA indirectly through a pension fund. It was a bit shocking to see MBS just snatch it off the NASDAQ and add it to his collection. Also, I've been reading arguments lately about how we're letting American capitalism die and this is the first time they resonated with me.

Pyrian on 8/10/2025 at 00:02

Quote Posted by heywood

So I figure this is like the Lucasfilm sale to Disney, and old EA favorites will be milked into oblivion like comic books.

At the end of the day, Disney is a company that creates content, which purchased Lucasfilm to make content of Lucasfilm's IP. Their output may be uneven to put it mildly, but I certainly can't complain that Disney's not making more Star Wars.

EA has been bought out by an investment group. It's much more of an Embracer situation. I don't expect we're going to see more output from EA.

Fafhrd on 8/10/2025 at 00:40

The Saudi SWF's part in this tells me this is all about EA Sports.

They're going to start putting the other studios and IPs on the chopping block by the end of next year.