It's official: EA is going private.

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Submitted ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨ampersandrew@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨games@lemmy.world⁩

https://bsky.app/profile/jasonschreier.bsky.social/post/3lzxzk5aifs2w

In a deal involving a company owned by Jared Kushner, a company that is basically just the Saudis, and $20B of debt.

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JakenVeina@midwest.social ⁨13⁩ ⁨seconds⁩ ago
Oh, cool, another buyout where the buyer doesn’t have to actually pay for it, they just take out a loan and magically make the company pay for it.

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plsnerf7@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
Right before bf6… well o7

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Kelcho@lemmy.zip ⁨17⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
Truly sad times

Not because of EA, but because of the private equity shit. They want to control everything

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daggermoon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Y’all shouldn’t be buying EA games anyway.

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desmosthenes@lemmy.world ⁨57⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
they don’t make good games anymore anyway

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- Duamerthrax@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  They’ve never made good games. They sometimes allowed one of their devs to make a good game when they weren’t looking, but no one is perfect.
  
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mohab@piefed.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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- sdcSpade@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Instead of lootboxes, you cut open journalists to get your prizes.
  
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  - criss_cross@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    What are the odds of getting the golden jet in your ultimate team?
    
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- kadaverin0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The religious skirting around the doctrines of their faith is a feature, not a bug.
  
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- brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  It would be interesting if EA pulled away from lootboxes for their owner’s ideological reasons.
  
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  - sundray@lemmus.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    You can bet they’ll pull away from LGBTQ+ representation.
    
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- ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  It doesn’t exactly scream “Shariah Compliant”, no.
  
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- False@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Maybe they’ll remove the gambling. Probably not but it would be good if they did.
  
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- slazer2au@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Except ea lost the FIFA licence in 2023.
  
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  - kameecoding@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.
    
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ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Just when you think EA can’t get any shittier, they find another way to lower the bar.

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- p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.
  
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  - lordnikon@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Toys R Us anyone?
    
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  - arudesalad@piefed.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    So we won't even get a shitty titanfall 3?
    
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- CosmoNova@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  EA 0.00052 seconds after hearing Nintendo is the worst game company…
  
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Tigeroovy@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Just when you thought EA couldn’t suck worse they find a way!

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kadaverin0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I haven’t bought an EA game since Mass Effect 3. This is just one more reason to never give them my money.

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ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Holy shit, that is a lot of debt… EA is going to be absolutely gutted. I imagine the ones gutting it will be paid generously for the trouble though.

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- Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  It’s only about 20% debt.
  
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RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
The idea of playing a new Mass Effect owned by Jared Kushner.

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EldenLord@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Rest in piss, EA

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- NikkiDimes@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  If we’re lucky, they’ll do a Toys-R-Us and make EA fund it’s own buyout.
  
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  - villainy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
    This is exactly what happened. To the tune of $20 billion.
    
    The EA studio slaughterhouse is about to go into overdrive.
    
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Master@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Meme:

Ea: was I a good game company.

Grim Reaper: No!

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Pronell@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I was already not buying their crap.

Now I can do so gleefully.

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- Krompus@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I set EA to Ignore on Steam two years ago. Ubisoft too.
  
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- WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  They don’t even make anything anymore. Just sports games, mobile games and Sims expansions.
  
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MyDarkestTimeline01@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
So THAT’S why they allowed Battlefield 6 to be so good. Had to pump up those player interest numbers.

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architect@thelemmy.club ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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?

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- WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  How many gamers bought Veilguard?
  
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- Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Haven’t bought an EA game ever. I think I’m already ahead of the curve XD
  
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  - Jarix@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
    NHL 95 was awesome…
    
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- Skullgrid@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.
  
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zewm@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
E A Sports. It’s in the shame!

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mrfriki@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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- ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  There is, but do you know who Jared Kushner is?
  
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  - crusa187@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    His dad is the president of Nintendo!
    
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ABetterTomorrow@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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expatriado@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
going private with debt is a sign of upcoming bankruptcy, possibly dissolution

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- someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Nah the Saudis are desperate to diversify. And they have the money to do it.
  
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But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
What difference does this make honestly? They’re already a shit company, what do I care who owns them?

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PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Guess I am not playing Battlefield 6 then…

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- Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Hop on the finals, my man, it’s made by ex-DICE employees.
  
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  - Psythik@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    How’s the player count?
    
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Bluefalcon@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The new FIFA will be crazy. To celebrate a goal, you can now kill and dismember a sideline reporter.

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MHLoppy@fedia.io ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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

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- brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  To add to this, Jason Schreier is a well known, and well sourced, gaming journalist.
  
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Schreier
  
  But you aren’t wrong. There’s literally no way to know that via Bluesky unless you’ve happen to read his stuff from Bloomberg and before.
  
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- simple@piefed.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The post replies also provide more context as someone that doesnt understand the legal lingo of the official post
  
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obinice@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
R.I.P Mass Effect.

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- tatann@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  It’s resting since 2012, not peacefully though :/
  
  They first zombified it in 2017 and now they’re poking its corpse every few years on the 7th of november
  
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Tronn4@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
EA, Its not in the game

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SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Mmmhhh, The FIA president, an Emirati, recently consolidated all power a made himself dictator of the association. Now the Saudis bought EA, the publisher that releases the F1 game. Bet the next thing to happen is a Qatari will buy Formula One, the current owner has already stated that he is willing to sell for the right offer.

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simple@piefed.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Huh.

So who’s betting that EA dissolves over the next few years and they start passing their IPs around to other companies? Not sure how I feel about this because on one hand it could end with EA in the gutter and their dead franchises in the hands of companies that still know how to make games

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- NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  You should be worried if you at all care about video games. Yes, EA sucks. But even a decade or so ago they were pretty much one of the big two and are still one of the biggest “developer” houses.
  
  Because we already saw this play out with Embracer et al and increasingly with Microsoft. Video games are a horrible investment. If you make a "good game"and do all of your PR right and get REALLY lucky? Yeah, you can buy a yacht or twenty. But that comes after 2-8 years of expensive development with many points where you have to just keep throwing money at it in the hopes of success.
  
  And EA was one of those companies that could get away with that because their sports games are so popular that they can fund development of the entire company AND still make a solid profit.
  
  Because
  
  it could end with EA in the gutter and their dead franchises in the hands of companies that still know how to make games
  
  That isn’t how this works. You don’t say “Wow. Development is really expensive and has no guaranteed ROI. Let’s fund external development that we have even less control over”.
  
  As Swen et al constantly remind people: Baldurs Gate 3 is not a model that studios can follow. It was a once in a lifetime convergence of circumstances. Larian had been making CRPGs for close to two decades at that point and had used multiple kickstarters to modernize their stack in a genre that had mostly been forgotten. And they STILL needed 3 years of early access and a LOT of marketing money (BG3 was a fricking keypoint of Stadia for crying out loud).
  
  That isn’t what Mass Effect or Dragon Age or Mirror’s Edge will get. At best they will get cheap remasters by Nightdive (which would actually be nice but…). More likely they will get the kind of “Are you sure this isn’t a mobile game? From the 2010s?” that we see plaguing Warhammer 40k and the like.
  
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  - simple@piefed.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It’s a problem only for the AAA industry, The market is correcting. It’s becoming clearer risky 200+ million dollar investments on one game that takes 8 years to make and flops on release isn’t working. This year especially showed the AA/indie scene thriving
    
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- ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I’m not sure that’s the likeliest situation, given the Saudis’ stake in so many other gaming companies. If memory serves, they’ve got in the neighborhood of a 10% stake in Nintendo and outright ownership of SNK.
  
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- Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I personally don’t care that huge companies that make bland boring flash stuff every year get thrown around to even crappier companies. I never bought their games, and will continue to not buy them. when I hear these games move to another company, I’ll assume they are just as crap and avoid them too.
  
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  - KoboldCoterie@pawb.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It’s not so much about the shovelware crap they release every year, but rather about the IPs that they own but aren’t doing anything with.
    
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- sbbq@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I would be so happy, they own a lot of great IPs that are just rotting on the vine.
  
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Kyrgizion@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Luckily EA hasn’t published anything I care about in over a decade. No big loss.

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- gerryflap@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  As a big Star Wars fan this hurts though. The Jedi: Fallen Order and Survivor games where my favorite Star Wars content after Andor since Disney took over. I was looking forward to the last game in the trilogy. But I don’t want these people to get any money and I’m also afraid that the project will be affected anyways :/
  
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- DaddleDew@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  EA has been dead to me since the mid 2000’s when they turned Battlefield 2, which I had purchased at full price, into a severely unbalanced Pay-To-Win game.
  
  It only went downhill since then.
  
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  - HereIAm@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Do in remember right that the special forces add-on was an online only purchase? I’m pretty sure the euro forces one was at least. I remember not having the new weapons for a long time until I could log in to my account on a friends computer with it installed.
    
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