So EA is going private through a deal with SilverLake and Saudi PIF.
A group of investors including private-equity firm Silver Lake and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund could unveil a deal for the publisher best known for its sports games as soon as next week, the source said.
Oof, that will definitely not end well.
Nature is healing…
I wonder if this will effect Game Pass Ultimate’s EA play offering?
Anything that includes the Saudi Public Investment Fund is a bad thing imo.
I doubt it will impact it at all.
The inclusion of EA Play on PC GamePass and GamePass Ultimate benefits EA. It provides a larger market for MTX revenue. When the games are “free” folks may feel more inclined to spend a little on the MTXes.
Literally me…
Yeah, and EA Play is a cheap subscription on its own and focused on backlog so they aren’t losing much with that partnership. Though I suppose the fear is about larger sweeping changes “under new management”. Like if EA drops EA play entirely in an attempt to push everyone to a more expensive whatever their premium service is called (like EA access or something).
after sportswashing we now get gameswashing. no thank you.
You do have to wonder if EA will shop themselves around though like activision did just before the microsoft deal. IDK usually if an acquisition is rumoured i become more hesitate to believe it as from all the rumoured gaming acquisitions, it was the ones that had little to no leaks/rumours that happened from microosft to buying Bethesda and ABK to Sony buying Bungie to Take Two buying Zynga to Embracer buying Square Enix west, SEGA buying Rovio and so on.
Not saying rumours are always wrong as we do know the rumours of Microsoft looking at SEGA, Bungie, WB games and IOI had been true even if they never actually bought them and based on the sharp raise in EA stock I think their is substantial evidence behind it but leaked acquisition feel more suspicious to me
And it was confirmed
well, shit
Confirmed: I will never buy an EA product again.
Eh, i don’t see it ending poorly. The involvement of Saudi Arabia makes it likely to be a long term investment. Regardless even as a fan of EA who thinks their hate is massively over blown, even if it is the worst case senario I would rather it be EA than most other notable targets minus Ubisoft
Games like Not-FIFA and BF print money, don’t they? So I guess those are safe?
Next Mass Effect however…
Honestly, I see a lot of negativity on other forums about this, and it might be but I genuinely just don’t know enough about how these things go.
I don’t think it will change much from either direct being honest. EA was the most blatently business focused ran company in gaming besides maybe Activision and I think they will be ran the exact same under new management
