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.
Sell 700 one million dollar skins
Don't tempt the whales
Bloodbath... Saudi Arabia
How literally are we talking here?
Unnecessary employees will be invited to the nearest consulate
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
Leveraged buyouts should be illegal
So, destroy its game making capabilities and just make money for the next 20 years from of microtransaction on existing content.
Kinda of a natural progression of AAA game publishers given the way things are nowadays.
Though how many devs does it take to increment one number for the new version of the game?
It massivelly depends on what changes and how well in terms of software design the whole is done, and judging from what I've seen, for multiple reasons (it's easier to exploit yound and naived developers and those don't know how to do good software design; performance tends to be a big thing in games dev and performance optiomizantion generally goes against good software design; it's an area that tends towards experimentalism rather than well though integrated software design) gamedev isn't an area of software development were software design tends to be good.
It's EA. Just search for "2026" replace with "2027".
Anyone who did not see this coming is an idiot.
EA is... in a loooot of debt lol. Thats why they needed a buy out.
They've not had a lot of success in the 2020s except for sports games they obviously pay a lot of money in licensing fees for.
The Sims.
You do not want to know how many 'dlc' there are for your digital dollhouse.
As well as entire community of enthusiastic corporate boot lickers with a 'cozy' aesthetic.
They are in a lof of debt because of the buy out.
They're also in a lot of debt from making dog shit for the last 15 years.
They've been making dogshit for a lot longer than that.
They used to have good games in addition to the dogshit ones. Now it's just the dogshit. Though to me the cutoff was 14 years ago, when they made the last Mass Effect game.
Touché.
Kind of yes, but actually no.
We just see that debt now, its explicit.
EA ... was subject to a leveraged buy out, that they sought out. They did this... because they needed cash, now.
What that means is that their internal financials were an absolute shit show... that they had, up untill that point, basically just legally lied about, hid, downplayed.
They fluffed up their balances and returns and cashflows in ways that are legal to do, but if you actually do due dilligence, you could read the writing on the wall.
Its basically the same as any other US company that got bought out / sold itself to private equity in the last 10 or 15 years.
Difference is, EA is so huge, it had to be bought out by essentially a sovereign wealth fund.
It takes a lot of money to make the same games for 25 years straight, change the front logo, the names of the players, make tiny tweaks and market it.
Maybe they need to start releasing Sims 2025, 2026, etc.
I will never forgive EA for destroying Maxis.
The problem is that they actually needed that much money for such mediocre games. They poured money into it and still made it an inferior game.
Sims was actually fun at the time... Until they did all the expansions
But, I really wish it was black and white. That was the best game
Black & White would have worked so well with VR.
It worked well even without it
We shouldn't have to remove the ladder for the pool in the Sims or play with fireworks. Should be able to pick them up and throw them
Oh I'm not disputing that the game we got was a good one, just that it seems like such an obvious concept for VR. I thought the sequel was disappointing. Focused entirely too much on warfare as the only viable strategy, and I missed the variety of wacky side quests and secrets scattered around the maps.
Well my days is not buying EA products are certainly coming to a middle.
Well that’s the end of EA. The owners will tear it apart and bleed it dry.
Well, the natural evolution from "keep on squeezing existing IP without inventing anything new" is ""keep in squeezing long published games without publishing any new games" .
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.
But the CEO’s job will be okay right?
Just wait for the article that the CEO is getting a $700 million bonus.
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.
I can't wait to play Battlefield 7: Saudi Victory Over The Jews.
fml
Given their bubby buddy relationship with the Zionist Supremacist Nation, it will more likely be "Saudi Victory Over The Persians".
Shit company gets worse
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.
Even worse: Jared Kushner is involved as well.
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.
The Saudi Absolute Monarchy aren't exactly know for their concern for the average person or their ability in managing anything that's not the kind of business which is basically a self-operating money printing machine, like Oil.
The liquidation shall continue until ~~moral~~ stakeholder wealth improves
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