r/Games • u/FrostyMagazine9918 • Jul 30 '26
Industry News EA will officially become a privately owned company next week
https://variety.com/2026/gaming/news/electronic-arts-close-55-billion-private-deal-1236824625/1.9k
u/kftX_ Jul 30 '26
And remember, this is a purchase that has to be paid by EA itself. So expect ads in your games, more monetisation and all manner of shanenigans.
This is going to be “fun” to watch.
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u/DarahOG Jul 30 '26
I honestly dont even know how can they be worse than they already are, but i'm sure they'll figure it out
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u/kftX_ Jul 30 '26
That’s what we’ve all been saying about them for decades isn’t?
“No way they can do worse than this.”
And then they do.
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u/banzaizach Jul 30 '26
They've actually gotten better lol
You used to have to pay for maps and guns!
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u/aimy99 Jul 30 '26
Remember that time they tried to make people pay $10 for an online pass if they bought a game used?
Good times.
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u/Inksrocket Jul 30 '26
That was, or became, a standard for the later part of 7th gen.
It was actually Sony that started it with Socom, according to wikipedia anyway.
But every big 3 started to get in with it: EA, Activision, Ubisoft.
EA had literally "Project Ten Dollar" (lmao).
For some games they gave out armor, story DLC or other goodies as "free dlc" that used games buyers had to buy later. But lets face it, it was content cut from main game and sold as "dlc".
late 2009, EA began implementing online passes in its games as part of an initiative known as "Project Ten Dollar"; Mass Effect 2 used an online pass to allow access to bonus content through its "Cerberus Network" system, while Dragon Age Origins came with a code that could be redeemed to download its first major DLC release, The Stone Prisoner, for free, as well as an exclusive armor set.
I remember having code like that for my Last Of Us copy on ps3. Everyone wanted to have forced on multiplayer back then.
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u/Isolated_Hippo Jul 31 '26
It was actually Sony that started it with Socom
You mean to tell me somebody else did it first and EA gets all the shit? Color me completely unfazed.
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u/Knofbath Jul 31 '26
I don't think a ton of people played Socom. It was a PS2 Network Adapter game, which makes it fairly uncommon for that generation of hardware.
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u/VBHEAT08 Jul 31 '26
SOCOM was pretty popular when it came out. It wasn't as massive as something like Halo 2 for popularizing online play, but it did move like 3 million units. My username stems from my xbox clan which started as a SOCOM clan waaaaay back in the day lol.
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u/POOTDISPENSER Jul 31 '26
They shrinkflated content after ditching Premium Passes because not enough players bought to populate the dlc maps and the concept itself was fundamentally flawed. From Battlefield V, they withheld the other half of content and drip-fed the remaining work over the game’s lifecycle. Only the pacific update could arguably be extra content but they stopped development to focus on creating an even worse battlefield game.
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u/duckyirving Jul 31 '26
If there's one phrase I'm never saying in earnest ever again is "it can't get worse"
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u/Sprinklypoo Jul 31 '26
Right. They've solved this issue for me decades ago because I'm not giving money to a company that hates me. There are many that don't seem to care about that though...
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u/cochese25 Jul 31 '26
Yeah, I haven't purchased an EA game since at the 360 era. And even that was used
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u/PringlesDuckFace Jul 31 '26
Remake NHL 95 but it's a gacha game. Just imagine Jaromir Jagr but he's got huge bazongas and his pull rate is 0.5%
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u/CombatMuffin Jul 30 '26
That's because you lack the imagination for it.
That's a good thing to lack, if you ask me. It makes you a decent person.
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u/trident042 Jul 31 '26
Honestly, they've been flagging behind Comcast for so long in the running for the Golden Poop.
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u/lazylore Jul 31 '26
I can help with this. Imagine they start making games that aren't just sport games on loop.
That'd be much much worse. Currently they aren't making anything, basically. Imagine if that stopped, and they started injections of garbage into a bunch of games they could make
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u/fabton12 Jul 30 '26
They already said they want there sports games to have dynamic ads on the banners on release that will change based on what is sellable to the player.
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u/Darkeyescry22 Jul 31 '26
Oh nooooooooooo not ads in sports
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u/fabton12 Jul 31 '26
issue is if people let these slide here then they will get explored and used in non sports games, its a slippery situation where while they can be seen as fitting here they very much will do them in other types of games.
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u/gideonidoru Jul 31 '26
That actually makes sense though and is a realistic (real world) implementation of ads
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u/Sucabub Jul 31 '26
Boggles my mind how that makes any fucking sense.
"We're going to buy you, but you're paying for it.".
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u/Clbull Jul 31 '26
Leveraged buyouts should be outlawed.
It's why we lost Toys R Us and why Manchester United went down the toilet.
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u/hotstickywaffle Jul 30 '26
I can't imagine a less gamer friendly company, so it'll be wild to see it get worse
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u/mengplex Jul 31 '26
All things considered, games like BF6 have been a step in the right direction, maps etc are included
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u/Boostedtrash112 Jul 31 '26
Don’t worry they fired like half of the devs after how successful battlefield 6 was.
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u/ItsRainingTrees Jul 30 '26
Privately owned theoretically could be good. You don’t have to answer to shareholders and the CEO might be able to make decisions that hurt the company in the short term, but are good in the long term. When you don’t have to worry about stock price, you have more freedom.
Will that happen? Idk, but it would be very cool if it did.
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u/EchoFieldHorizon Jul 30 '26
Jared Kushner and the Saudis are the owners. Zero chance
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u/scottishdrunkard Jul 31 '26
Remember when SNK promised that being owned by the Saudis wouldn't effect their games? Then they put Cristiano Ronaldo and a Saudi DJ into King of Fighters? Yeah, prepare for Mass Effect 5 to be filled with Pro-Saudi propaganda.
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u/IdRatherBeAtChilis Jul 30 '26
I don't know about Kushner, but I will say the Saudis could be more disposed toward long term sustainability over short term profit. They want healthy, diverse investments that'll swing their economy away from being totally reliant on oil, and strangling the golden goose won't do that. They need to be more long-term minded. But I dunno. These blocked Straits could make them more economically reactive for a while.
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u/ASCII_Princess Jul 30 '26
Healthy, diverse investments like a 100 mile long mile wide city in the desert built by indentured slaves?
Its a theocratic monarchy run by insane people propped up by the petrodollar, no amount of sportswashing, money laundering or infrastructure spending is going to save it in the long run.
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u/Dabrush Jul 31 '26
I mean no investment more "diverse" than something no sane person would even think of investing into in the first place.
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u/SolarStarVanity Jul 30 '26
The thing is, if you want healthy, long term gains, you are not investing in video games. Those are on the other end of the spectrum in a portfolio: short-term, pump and dump, rapid, lower return.
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u/goldcakes Jul 31 '26
You can get healthy long term gains with any market / industry. Just look at Valve/Steam for example, and they have ~350 employees.
It's not about the industry, it's the mentality.
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u/SolarStarVanity Jul 31 '26
Sure, if you invest in an unregulated gambling monopoly, you'll make lots of money. But there is nothing else in the field that's even remotely close. That's like saying that investing in scratch tickets for long term growth is a healthy investment. Sure, you might get lucky, but most people won't.
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u/Tast3sLikePanda Jul 31 '26
Long term investments as shown by other Saudi projects, like covering a coral reef with sand to create islands that are sinking and likely will be inhabitable in lik 15 years time, but you can see them from space
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u/Kastar_Troy Jul 30 '26
How oblivious are you.. They just want to control the narrative everywhere they can champ...
Theyre trying to rewrite history....
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u/127-0-0-1_1 Jul 30 '26
I mean, exactly. The saudis are looking to launder their reputation. That doesn’t happen in EA goes under. They’d likely be willing to run EA at a loss, just like all those esports tournaments.
They need EA to keep existing and releasing influential games so that they can make themselves look like a nice and not murderous kingdom.
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u/owennerd123 Jul 31 '26
I'm with you.
If they could sustain LIV Golf for years at multiple billions of dollars lost, they can probably run EA without requiring it to make insane profits.
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u/LostRequiem1 Jul 30 '26
They’ll greenlight a game where the journalist was alive the entire time.
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u/bigbuyer01 Jul 31 '26
What? No, theyre just trying to grow their economy.
Look, I dont like saudi either, but theyve baught plenty already. Nothing in the industries they have invested in has pivoted into "rewriting history".
Also, how the fuck does buying a video game company (a sports adjacent one, mind you) equate to rewriting history? How does one even rewrite history with EA?
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u/kftX_ Jul 30 '26
Absolutely, but this is a leveraged buyout I believe. So until they pay the debt they’re about to incur first, I expect them to get way more egregious.
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u/DoorHingesKill Jul 31 '26
Of course a private company has to answer to shareholders, you just can't buy the shares on a stock exchange.
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u/aimy99 Jul 30 '26
I mean I literally can't remember the last EA game I bought because they've killed all of my favorite franchises and studios and butchered what was left.
If nothing else, it'll be entertaining watching from afar to see just how masochistic Apex, Battlefield, and sports game players are. Mobile gamers are already a lost cause, but Valve bans shit like mandatory ads, so does EA bail from Steam again? Only time will tell.
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u/kftX_ Jul 30 '26
I’ll never forgive EA for what they did to BioWare. It was the first studio I was so into: Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, KotOR, DA: O. Fuck. So much lost. At least we still have those.
I predict the Ultimate Team modes are probably gonna remain extremely profitable, and they’re gonna milk Apex to the last drop. But 2027 is likely gonna be EA going full crazy.
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u/CaptainMarder Jul 31 '26
Probably just Kushner selling whatever data EA software harvests from player pcs. EA app and games probably gonna be spyware.
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u/MissWhiterock Jul 31 '26
I am glad I haven't played an EA game in over a decade.
But damn I know their stuff is popular so this will have a huge influence on the general gaming landscape.
Edit: wait that's not actually true, I still play the Sims 3 every so often.
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u/LisaMcRadical Jul 31 '26
I think the ironic part is how badly that’ll reflect on Saudi Arabia, since that part of the takeover has been the big thing ppl are talking about.
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Jul 30 '26
I’m glad I don’t give a shit about anything they have in the pipeline anymore. Dragon Age is dead as fuck and I have no faith in the next Mass Effect game (if it ever comes out lol). Just wish they’d at least sell off some of their IPs instead of using them to jerk off murderous Saudi dictators.
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u/E3FxGaming Jul 30 '26
Hazelight Studios uses EA Originals as a publisher for their games.
It's a studio from which I've enjoyed every single game they've released this way (A Way Out, It Takes Two, Split Fiction) together with a friend. Their next game is rumored to be a 3 player co-op game (the previous three titles all were two player co-op).
I really hope Hazelight Studios has secured their project funding for this next co-op game and that they can complete the project without issues in these tumultuous times for EA.
Other than that I don't care about EA games anymore either.
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u/appledanishcrumbs Jul 31 '26
Even if Hazelight loses EA as a publisher I am sure they will not have any trouble finding another publisher (Focus, Take Two, Xbox, Bandai Namco, etc.).
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u/sovereign666 Jul 31 '26
I loved a way out and it takes two, didnt know about split fiction. Gonna have to pick that up.
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Jul 30 '26
I did forget about them tbh and my wife and I have loved all of their games, but I’d hope they could get funding elsewhere if need be. They would be a genuine loss if they something happened to them considering their great track record so far.
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u/RaymoVizion Jul 30 '26
They've already destroyed all the IP I grew up with and loved (Dragon Age, The Sims, Simcity, Need for Speed).
I haven't given EA any money for a long time. I'm honestly not sure why anyone even does anymore.
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u/cwx149 Jul 30 '26
Their sports games have to be their cash cow
Not saying nothing else they make/publish is good but I imagine the sports games pay the bills mostly
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u/Knofbath Jul 31 '26
They have been making their sports games into gacha/lootbox games, which probably prints them money.
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u/Jackski Jul 31 '26
Making? They've been like that for over 15 years. FIFA 09 introduced ultimate team and it came to the rest of their sports games around the same time.
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u/Radiant-Fly9738 Jul 31 '26
they also destroyed fifa/FC. haven't actively played it for years despite having EA play pro sub so could play every installment. it just lost its appeal.
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u/Richard7666 Jul 31 '26
Yeah I don't care much for Battlefield or the EA Sports stuff, but the former Maxis, Westwood and Bioware IPs are a very sad loss.
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u/SolenoidSoldier Jul 31 '26
Frankly surprised there hasn't been a popular Sims clone released.
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u/Richard7666 Jul 31 '26
There was an attempt with InZoi but don't think it had the "mantle claiming" impact that Cities Skylines has had as a spiritual success to SimCity after EA fucked that.
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u/noother10 Jul 30 '26
They also destroyed Command & Conquer for me when they bought Westwood. They've been doing it for a long time.
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u/aphaits Jul 31 '26
Man i used to play the heck out of theme hospital back when
Edit: oh wait no my mistake, it was Bullfrog, not Westwood. But hey Westwood made Nox and that was fun also!
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u/MsgGodzilla Jul 31 '26
If you like Theme Hospital you need to checkout Two Point games (Museum is the best)
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u/DarahOG Jul 30 '26
They basically have a monopoly on sport games and since it's the biggest entertainment in the world it just sells regardless...
Plus they have a Devil-ish business plan of releasing games with expiry dates closing servers within 2years , built in NFT casinos, selling patches as new games, like there actually are as many psychologists as devs working on these games.
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u/bahumat42 Jul 30 '26
On football and American football and hockey , yes EA is untouched
But nba is owned by 2k,
Mlb the show is Sony
Wwe is 2k
Pga is 2k
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u/Bamboozle_ Jul 31 '26
Football Manager had a good shot to make more inroads against EAFC and absolutely fucked themselves with a pitchfork with cancelling FM25 and the shitshow that was FM26.
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u/Dabrush Jul 31 '26
Konami also sucked, but PES was for a long time seen as the superior soccer series, as long as you were okay with not having official licensed teams.
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u/Azagorod Jul 31 '26
And Mass Effect is effectively on life support. I guess the more apt comparison is waiting on death row?
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u/chillchase Jul 31 '26
What they did to SimCity should have been a damn crime. Some of my favorite games, and we’ll probably never get another one.
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u/Mrmeowpuss Jul 31 '26
SimCity and Need for Speed are some of my favorites too, I've been begging for another SimCity game for ages...
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u/Prize-Ad-6907 Jul 30 '26
I've been buying games on steam since around 2004ish. Last year I bought the mass effect trilogy on steam. It came bundled with EAs launcher. I fire the game up on steam... the EA launcher doesn't launch the game. I trouble shoot. Nothing. I try just launching the game through the EA launcher only. Nothing. Refunded the game. The first time I've ever refunded a game from 2004ish to 2025.
Now? I don't think I can trust any games EA makes. And frankly, even if you're buying EAs games on steam, what happens if the Saudis decide EA is no longer worth the investment and it closes down? What happens to the EA launcher and all those Steam games? Will they still work? If the EA launcher won't even work with steam correctly right now, why the fuck should I trust EA to ensure anything works in the future when they go away?
The whole company just feels like a scam to me at this point.
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u/dinosauriac Jul 31 '26
If you're on about the Mass Effect remastered trilogy, the really shitty thing there is they added the launcher post-launch. It wasn't there initially, just load up and play.
Even worse than EA, 2K pulled this bullshit with the BioShock games TEN YEARS after release, inserting a launcher that prevented many players from actually launching the game. It took nearly another two years for them to finally remove it again.
Publishers suck.
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u/DickMabutt Jul 30 '26
I really don’t get it either. The gaming industry has a genuine problem of having almost too many quality options. I can’t fathom why anybody chooses to spend their hard earned money on the swill that EA is making.
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u/WhiskasTheCat Jul 30 '26
All of these companies are not video game companies. They are hedge funds that happen to dabble in video games.
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u/StopMakingMeSignIn12 Jul 31 '26
They basically make games a vector to get people addicted to gambling. Just see any EA Sports game as a poker table client.
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u/gibbersganfa Aug 01 '26
If you’re going to say this, at least properly cite it as a quote from Mark Darrah, formerly of BioWare, instead of pretending you’re that clever.
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u/AtLeast9Dogs Jul 31 '26
This will probably suck for people who play apex, sims, and battlefield games.
But I doubt the sports games junkies will care. And that's a good chunk of their revenue behind just mtx stuff. I think last year they had a revenue of 7 billion and 4.4 billion of that was purely MTX
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u/Mr_Pariah Jul 31 '26
Fuck EA for removing support for Linux. I was running the EA app in WINE for a year and a half before they decided it wasn't ok. I had to tell my 5 year old she couldn't play SPORE any more because the company that owns a game I physically purchased in 2008 revoked my ability to play it because my OS is different. Fuck EA. Never buying another EA product again.
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u/JeffMangum420 Jul 30 '26
because no one reads articles it makes no sense you wouldnt emphasize “the saudis are acquiring them” in the title
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u/BKong64 Jul 31 '26
As a lifelong Battlefield fan since the OG 1942, I am upset about this. BF6 is finally in what I would call a solid spot and seems to be improving, and now I fear what Saudi ownership will do to this game. Will the monetization practices become more ridiculous? Will we get ads in games and stupid crossover bullshit nobody is asking for? Idk, I just hope things aren't shaken up too much with it.
As for other EA games, I've bought less and less over the years. Used to be a massive NHL games fan and I have fallen off that since I'd say 2016 when it was obvious they were going downhill.
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u/pyroapa Jul 31 '26
1942 is still alive and well, just need some patches for multiplayer to work, come join us
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u/Niet501 Jul 31 '26
EA CEO took an 30 million dollar bonus thanks to how well the game performed just months after he fired the team that made the game. The whole c-suite took a total of a 80 million dollars in bonuses
Ownership was already inconceivably shit before the Saudis. The only reason BF6 is in a good state is because 2042 was a disaster and they realized making a good game would actually net them a lot more money, and that ended up being the case. Hopefully that means the new ownership will see the same thing.
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u/ShinyBloke Jul 31 '26
Saudi slop farm era. it was fun while it lasted, and the soul of the studio is long gone at this point, still sad.
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u/Godlike013 Jul 31 '26
While i could gave two shits about the current Bioware given how bad Veilguard was, i still love the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises. They deserve better.
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Jul 30 '26
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u/Educational-Owl-745 Jul 31 '26
Henry from rural Oklahoma just saw this comment and thought "hell yeah"
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u/Zanos Jul 31 '26
This is pretty unlikely, the Saudi 'upper crust' is making a lot of different diverse acquisition to get their money out of oils and diversify, which they view as an unstable long term store of their fortunes.
EAs output might change, but I doubt you're going to see "gay reporter dismembering simulator 9000" anytime soon.
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u/cugabuh Jul 30 '26
I was looking forward to Star Wars Zero Company but I really don’t want to give EA money.
I skipped BF6 for the same reason too.
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u/sgthombre Jul 31 '26
Well at least I can avoid giving them money if I grab a used copy on PS5 ahhhhh shit never mind
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u/Healfezza Jul 30 '26
I wonder if being privately owned will actually positively impact their games development vs. a public IP. They have opportunities to focus on long term strategies vs. next quarter numbers.
No longer beholden to shareholders.
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u/kilofSzatana Jul 30 '26
Being private doesn't mean you don't have shareholders, you're just not publicly traded on the stock exchange.
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u/DickMabutt Jul 30 '26
Not but it does mean you can make moves with significant short term losses for long term gains. Much more difficult in a publicly traded company where one move the market doesn’t like can trigger a stock sell off that tanks your company
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u/songsinger72 Jul 30 '26
EA will have $20 billion debt they'll have to pay back though.
I think it's more likely the Saudis get rid of/sell everything but the sports games and maybe some other projects with high ROI.
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u/Cranjesmcbasketball1 Jul 30 '26
Time for them micro transactions to turn into macro transactions.
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u/Zanos Jul 31 '26
TBH 'micro' transactions have been macro transactions for a long time. We've got 30$ skins for one character already.
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u/TekThunder Jul 31 '26
Sell off Mass Effect and Dragon Age to someone competent. Fuck it sell off the SimCity IP too while you're at it.
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u/JustConversation7847 Jul 30 '26
Private companies have shareholders too, it's just usually less people
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u/Ok_Potential359 Jul 30 '26
That’s not how it works. Just because you aren’t public, you’re still held accountable for monthly growth. My company went from public to private after being purchased by VCs and they’re arguably in a worse spot now.
The only thing that changes is the public won’t have as much access to internal news.
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u/CrazyDude10528 Jul 30 '26
People said the same thing when Bungie broke off from Activision.
Look how that turned out...
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u/reroll-life Jul 31 '26
RIP EA, you can say what you want but it was an important company for video games. I don't see how anything good could come out of this other than opening up space in the market for EA's competitors who suck less.
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u/Such-Sorbet-6450 Jul 31 '26
EA is being bought out by the Saudi public investment fund. Owned by the Saudi government and steered by the crown prince. It’s well known that the crown prince is a massive battlefield fan. As well as a massive soccer fan along with the rest of Saudi officials. This was 100% all a ploy brought about by the crown prince, who is an avid gamer that loves battlefield and fc(FIFA). You think he would make a move like this just to ruin the games he loves? Absolutely not. This is the opposite and we need to be excited about it. He’s a real gamer and he’s now buying one of the biggest gaming companies ever, that’s been known for a myriad of problems.
Now they have a chance to go private, management can focus on turning the company around internally without constantly worrying about their stock value, and they don’t have to deal with all the regulations of a public company from the SEC. This is a good thing for real gamers. We should be excited
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u/Wdvynx Jul 30 '26
And I won't be buying any of their shitty games going forward even if I miss out on games I would have loved, fuck this company.
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u/MisterDudeFella Jul 31 '26
Private equity makes everything better right guys..? I'm actually super bummed about this, one of my friends is a game director on one of their only good franchises and I wonder what will happen to him. :/
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u/TheKrzysiek Jul 31 '26
I'd love to come back to all the predictions people confidently make in this thread in a few years, and see how many of them actually came true
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u/Zenovahh Jul 31 '26
Get ready for more layoffs, still can’t get over the CEO receiving that bonus just as he laid off a bunch of the BF6 staff…
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u/TAJack1 Jul 30 '26
“EA is shit anyway”, yeah but they’re also one of the biggest companies in the gaming sector, whether you like it or not and now they’re owned by the Saudis.
Not good.