Comment on Bloodbath Ahead For EA As It Looks To Cut $700 Million In Annual Costs Under Saudi Arabia

YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  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.

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  • TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    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.

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    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      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.

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      • blartcap_@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Wait when was the last time they were leveraged for $20B?

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  • boonhet@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Another Sims? Don’t be daft. They’ll release another Sims DLC and get all the money with much less effort.

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  • KC_Royalz@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    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

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• Canconda@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I did a buad report on EA once. TLDR they’re basically Martin Shkreli but a corporation.

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  • boonhet@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    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.

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    • Canconda@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Probably the former as I doubt defrauding a Saudi prince would result in mere incarceration.

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      • boonhet@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        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.

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• Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Well, the natural evolution from “keep on squeezing existing IP without inventing anything new” is "“keep in squeezing published games without publishing any new games” .

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• artyom@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Good riddance

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• Canconda@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  lol this guy thought that was EA’s final form! /s

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