Well that’s the end of EA. The owners will tear it apart and bleed it dry.
People have been predicting the death of EA for over twenty years.
Meanwhile, they release another Madden and another FIFA and another Sims and another Star Wars, then mint themselves another $7B. Nevermind that all of these games are just reskinned copies of the games they’ve been releasing going back to the mid-90s.
Yesn’t.
That may have been somewhat true in the past, but it is hard to articulate just how big of a hole they are in right now. The leveraged buyout has pushed EA’s debt to over $20Billion USD.
They make that money back or they might not, but they are going to absolutely pillage and destroy the company in the process. The word that often follows “leveraged buyout” is “bankruptcy”. It’s a tale as old as corporate history.
Maybe. But there’s an enormous amount of money to wring out of EA, even with the debts. And you can go back decades to read about their deplorable labor practices. This isn’t even the first time EA has been subjected to this kind of aggressive cash hungry squeeze.
Another Sims? Don’t be daft. They’ll release another Sims DLC and get all the money with much less effort.
Seriously, 4 has been a cash cow for over a decade now, with biannual expansion packs.
I bought battlefield 6 still enjoy it. And I bought the first year college football came back. But haven’t bought one since. And have hardly touched it. Game was much harder than the old days
I did a buad report on EA going on 20 years ago. TLDR they’re basically Martin Shkreli but a corporation.
Like Martin Shkreli in that they’ll increase the price of a life-saving drug 20x without consequences, or like Martin Shkreli in that they’ll go to prison for defrauding rich investors?
Seriously fucked up that the second was considered a crime, but not the first, in Shkreli’s case.
Probably the former as I doubt defrauding a Saudi prince would result in mere incarceration.
Fair, though since it was a leveraged buyout, I reckon it would be JP Morgan Chase who’d be getting defrauded. The only question is whether MBS wants that kind of image for the saudi PIF.
Essentially, MBS and Kushner would find a way to spin all the valuable IPs into other companies and leave only the debt and maybe some IPs at EA Games. Then it becomes a worthless company that owes JPMorgan Chase 20 billion with a fairly high interest rate.
Good riddance
lol this guy thought that was EA’s final form! /s
I don’t care what they do. Even if I hadn’t already been boycotting EA for 10+ years, I’d never install Saudi-owned ring-0 “anticheat” software on any of my computers.
Boycott harder!
Well my days is not buying EA products are certainly coming to a middle.
Do you know, why EA is the worst company in the whole US of A? It’s because Ubisoft is in France.
They paid 53 bil for something that has only 300 mil /year in profits?
A 200 year ROI (interest on the 20 bil loan for the leveraged buyout that ea itself will need to pay) doesn’t seems too bad
Shit company gets worse
CEO Andrew Wilson is set for a massive payday. The company’s last SEC filing before going private pointed to a $77 million payout for the last fiscal year, double the number that was previously reported.
One of the finer aspects of unfettered capitalism.
A lot of people are glancing over the fact that now a country is running this Video Game company. I’m not betting that the Saudis will: Open up old IPs, take care of labor costs, respect the players, not install spyware onto customer’s machines and report their party affiliation or any government secrets stored on said machine.
If you didn’t trust EA being run by a private company then I bet you won’t trust EA being ran by a government.
Games are essentially attack vectors with kernal level access to your computer.
The united States is looking at doing something about Chinese gaming companies, yet we are okay with handing over what is essentially a back door over to the Saudis.
I just think its weird what malware we are okay with.
Games are essentially attack vectors with kernal level access to your computer.
Some games, with very specific anticheat. Let’s not spread misinformation.
That being said, yeah I don’t get it either - I refused to play Valorant for this reason.
I mean even games without anti-cheat are attack vectors. Some 18 year old kid is going to prison because his game stole crypto.
Also that’s pretty much what I was explaining, I just assumed everyone already knows what I’m talking about. I wouldnt say its misinformation, just lazy short hand and me expecting the audience here to be caught up enough to know what I mean.
Even worse: Jared Kushner is involved as well.
And? What fucks are there left to give about a publically malicious/murderous government buying a publically malicious company which publically destroys their creatives ability to stay alive in this capitalist shitscape?
I want the heart and soul of those studios (the creatives) to create a tsunami of indie studios to revive the long lost connection between the gamers and the makers.
We have to support indie devs if we want gaming to be better for all involved.
Leveraged buyouts should be illegal
Bloodbath… Saudi Arabia
How literally are we talking here?
Unnecessary employees will be invited to the nearest consulate
Sell 700 one million dollar skins
Don’t tempt the whales
I can’t wait to play Battlefield 7: Saudi Victory Over The Jews.
fml
Jews Victory over The Jews?
The liquidation shall continue until
moralstakeholder wealth improvesWhile* stakeholder wealth improves
But the CEO’s job will be okay right?
Just wait for the article that the CEO is getting a $700 million bonus.
