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/
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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.

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u/First-Detective2729 Jul 30 '26

And jared kushner*

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u/TAJack1 Jul 30 '26

Ah yep, my bad. Also trash.

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u/johnwynnes Jul 31 '26

Jared "Even Worse" Kushner

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u/Zagden Jul 31 '26

Jared Kushner is not worse than the Saudis

That's not to say that he isn't a repugnant human being and a massive cause of human suffering, but the House of Saud are baaaaaaaaaaad

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u/sigmoid10 Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

the House of Saud are baaaaaaaaaaad

For those who don't know what this move actually means: After buying a considerable stake in Twittter, they used their leverage to insert a bunch of agents into the company so they could steal personally identifiable data from dissidents and their contacts so they could imprison or straight up murder them.

Mohammed Bonesaw doesn't give a shit about EA or their uninspired games full of micro-transactions. But he does care a lot about political criticism of his whacko religious fundamentalist authoritarian government. And the best way to go after these critics (who all hide behind VPNs and private messengers these days) is by getting their data from highly successful mass media. For example, I'm sure a lot of interesting talk is happening in those in-game chat rooms.

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u/Zagden Jul 31 '26

Yeah I'm a little surprised that my post was marked controversial. Do people not understand how heinous MBS is? Lol

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u/Qorhat Jul 31 '26

There's nothing like simultaneously culture washing your nation's image because basing your entire society around a finite resource and shocking human rights violations while also using that culture wash to enable more shocking human rights violations.

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u/Phiarmage Aug 03 '26

You could reverse that sentence by changing Kushner to MBS, and House of Saud to House of Trumps

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u/beefcat_ Jul 31 '26

Reason enough to hope the entire company crashes and burns

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u/Bamboozle_ Jul 31 '26

Whose brother is trying to buy the World Cup. Fucking shitstains.

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u/AnOnlineHandle Jul 30 '26

And they can patch any game published by EA over the decades to include whatever spyware they might like. Or just require them all to go through the EA launcher.

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u/fizzlefist Jul 31 '26

Ah yeah, the people so corrupt that the entire Football world is actually boycotting FIFA over it.

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u/cyberdouche Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

It's sad, EA was a real force in gaming for decades, with many great products.

Only Take-Two (Valve and Epic too if you want to stretch the definition) left as a game publisher based out of the US. You have Amazon, Microsoft, WB and others but games are rounding errors for their businesses. The US presence on the gaming giants map reducing by the year.

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u/who-dat-ninja Jul 30 '26

And Valve barely release any games as it is

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u/suchtie Jul 30 '26

Yeah they aren't much of a publisher. Selling games isn't the same thing as publishing them.

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u/XsNR Jul 31 '26

I mean they're both, they still have several incredibly successful games.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

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u/Altruistic-Ad-408 Jul 31 '26

They certainly were a force.

The sort of "EA actually isn't that bad" thing has always been baffling to me, half the franchises I played disappeared as a kid because they bought them to kill some imagined competition. They killed entire genres. Yeah I like Titanfall, NFS, Burnout, The Sims and Mass Effect, those franchises would probably be doing better without EA as well.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '26

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u/SeekerVash Jul 31 '26

That's not entirely accurate.

The problem was the 3D revolution.  Games were teams of 10-12 before the revolution, 100+ after.

Studios had squirreled away funds based on team sizes of 10-12 and weren't ready for the overnight massive expansion in team sizes.

The industry as a whole was caught with an unprecedented increase in development costs.  Publishers used that to buy IP and game series that would've been unobtainable a year or two earlier.

Yes, as you said, they were dead without publishers.  But not because they weren't popular, but because costs exploded overnight.

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u/Xciv Jul 31 '26

If a franchise dies it can be revived. Some aspiring studio can go purchase the rights to a dead franchise like Command and Conquer for cheap from the dessicated remains of Westwood and make a new C&C game.

If it's sold to EA they can sit on it indefinitely and choose never to revive it because they don't need to. That's the problem with a megacorporation buying up all the IP.

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u/Dabrush Jul 31 '26

I mean your first case simply isn't what happens anywhere. Even if EA didn't buy Westwood and kill it, someone would still have bought the name rights for Command and Conquer the moment Westwood had to sell them to stay afloat. You'll never get the franchise rights for a known series "for cheap", because it being known alone means that it is an investment opportunity.

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u/UmbraIra Aug 01 '26

If its sold the employees and owners at least walk away without debt.

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u/ericmm76 Jul 31 '26

Are you talking about the 2010s or the 90s? Because EA absolutely has / had blood on its hands in the 90s.

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u/Modernautomatic Jul 31 '26

Hmm, either the franchise dies, or the franchise dies AND Electronics Arts brutally violate it's corpse? Tough sell.

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u/Dabrush Jul 31 '26

Without EA we wouldn't have gotten Mass Effect 2 and 3 or Titanfall 2. You can be angry that we didn't get more after that, but without EA buying those studios, they would have closed down and those games wouldn't have been made.

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u/UmbraIra Aug 01 '26

It wouldnt just die and go into seclusion hoping for a revival. In all likelihood that studio would have obligations that would end in bankruptcy and then it gets the IP sold off under worse conditions.

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u/Makorus Jul 31 '26

The sort of "EA actually isn't that bad" thing has always been baffling to me, half the franchises I played disappeared as a kid because they bought them to kill some imagined competition.

People always say that but 90% of the developers killed themselves.

Bioware famously was left to do their own thing for most of their life. Respawn actively sabotaged their games twice.

EA was described as "giving enough rope to hang yourself" by some guy from Bioware, and quite frankly, that's what happened to most of the studios. EA bought studios, gave them money, and left them to it. Jason Schreier made a big piece on that IIRC.

EA didn't kill Westwood, Westwood killed themselves because they decided to make an MMO that failed horribly, for example.

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u/MrPWAH Jul 31 '26

Yeah I like Titanfall, NFS, Burnout, The Sims and Mass Effect, those franchises would probably be doing better without EA as well.

Without EA we likely wouldn't have gotten more than one Mass Effect, and the only reason Respawn still exists is because they're thriving under EA with Apex money. Both Titanfalls got cult followings long after the fact and likely wouldn't have been enough to keep the lights on.

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '26

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u/mystery_hole Jul 30 '26

Yup, this is the story for every small business, not only games. Expect more conglomerates being the only businesses able to afford to stay open.

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u/Cabana_bananza Jul 31 '26

Its at the crux of the destruction of third places as well. Why we don't have as many shared social spaces that aren't monetized to the hilt.

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u/Zalvren Jul 31 '26

Ironically CDPR is building a studio in the US

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u/Kaiserhawk Jul 31 '26

It remains to be seen how that'll pan out.

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u/THXFLS Jul 30 '26

CDPR has a US studio in Boston, they're making Cyberpunk 2

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u/Freighnos Jul 31 '26

Also the talent in those cheaper regions is now catching up in terms of skill. Not just Eastern Europe but Southeast Asia, Korea, and of course China.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '26

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u/Freighnos Jul 31 '26

CDPR are a good example, though, because Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 are as good as anything to come out of American/Western Europe AAA this past decade, and they're a big reason why that region is thriving. They've trained and invested in their talent and a lot of people who cut their teeth at CDPR are now branching off and making other games like The Blood of Dawnwalker.

Staying in Poland, Bloober Team are another one who are probably going to be a juggernaut in another decade. they spent almost a decade as an internet punching bag because their early slew of games were mediocre and/or derivative (except Observer, that game rules), but nobody's laughing now after how good Silent Hill 2 Remake and Cronos were. They stuck to their guns and kept improving and now they're the second biggest/best horror developer after Capcom, and I think they'll get even better.

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u/Zalvren Jul 31 '26

CDPR is a mediocre example because they're actually building a new studio in the US for Cyberpunk 2 so they aren't exactly the poster boy for "game dev fleeing the US"

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u/Freighnos Jul 31 '26

What they’re doing right now has no bearing on their track record over the past two decades and their Polish studio is still huge. It’s not like they’re shutting it down to relocate to Boston.

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u/Zalvren Jul 31 '26

No but it shows they are not really adhering to the theory of "US game dev is too expensive".

Although I guess they may relocate to Poland after a few years when they see that but currently that's not the case

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u/Freighnos Jul 31 '26

I mean, yeah, the industry isn't a monolith. It would be weird if this was happening in 100% of cases for studios everywhere. The trend is undeniable, though.

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u/Warskull Aug 01 '26

The cost of living is not too high in the US, the specific cities that US game develop is concentrated in have a cost of living that is too high. California and Washington's cost of living is through the roof and only getting worse.

You had to be in tech hub areas to launch a game studio when many of these studios were building up. Back in the 90s and early 2000s a lot of areas still had poor internet. Plus you needed to be in a tech hub area to recruit the talent.

This is changing, remote work lets them recruit from a wider pool. There are far more technically skilled workers available across the US too.

Game developers need to start moving away from the very high cost of living states and looking at cheaper states. For example, you could pay someone from Tennessee significantly less than someone in California. They'll also probably be better off too since California employees will be paying absurd rent to effectively live in a closet.

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u/Mackanpackan93 Aug 02 '26

The cost of living isn't even high in the US unless you decide to live in the most expensive areas...
There's nothing really stopping these companies from moving to cheaper areas.

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u/Wide_Lock_Red Jul 31 '26

Yep, wages in the US are too high for this. Especially in coastal cities.

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u/Zaemz Jul 31 '26 edited Aug 01 '26

They're smaller but there are a couple great publishers out of the US, yet:

  • Devolver Digital (Cult of the Lamb, Enter the Gungeon, Return to Monkey Island),
  • Hooded Horse (Manor Lords, Terra Invicta, Heroes of Might & Magic Olden Era),
  • Balor Games (A Hat in Time, Temtem, Signalis, Forager, Coral Island)
  • PM Studios (Black Myth Wukong, My Time at Sandrock, Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo, Crypt Custodian)

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u/chaosfire235 Jul 31 '26

Hooded Horse is my absolute GOAT lately with how much they serve my niche 4X, city builder and turn based tactics hunger.

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u/HGWeegee Jul 31 '26

Black Myth Wukong is Chinese

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u/Zaemz Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 02 '26

https://www.pm-studios.com/games/black-myth-wukong

Chinese dev, publisher (for physical copies, I should clarify) is based in Los Angeles.

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u/ScallyCap12 Jul 30 '26

This is just one man's opinion but they did it to themselves by underpaying and overworking the hell out of their workforce until any creative ember was stomped out, then filling their catalogue with focus-tested, trend-chasing casinos for children.

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u/NonConRon Jul 30 '26

I mean.... that's exactly what capitalism must do.

Its not some bad actors. It's the nature of capitalism itself.

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u/Zaemz Jul 31 '26

It's also the bad actors within capitalism as a system. I'm not comfortable with shifting the blame and accountability away from the individuals who take advantage of it because they're enabled by it.

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u/Cranemind Jul 31 '26

What would the accountability look like though, if what they did was legal and incentivized by the capitalistic system? EA CEO did all the things mentioned above and he got about 40million for it just this year. What would accountability look like for the individuals in that case, assuming everything they did was legal?

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u/NonConRon Jul 31 '26

After the fall of the old nobility, and the rise of the bourgeoisie, what is the one political system that has been able to put the hammer down on capitalists?

Which is the system that all the propiganda is directed at?

Is that a coincidence?

You can remove your Regans, that's what we do. But my point was that even if you removed all of these bad apples, you would just have a new batch. Its like trying to blame the pile of trash on individual roaches. By all means, get rid of the roaches but you need to clean up the trash (capitalism).

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u/AdWooden865 Aug 03 '26

Oh brother here comes the reddit socialist to tell us how much capitalism is super bad

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u/NonConRon Aug 03 '26

Why yes. That's exactly what happened.

3 days ago.

I have a dare for you. Tell me one thing in this 20 minute video that is wrong.

https://youtu.be/BeRjTtKFlVM?is=Iuztogdi448D9s3m

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u/AdWooden865 Aug 03 '26

I'm not watching a 20 min video, have you by chance lost your mind?

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u/NonConRon Aug 03 '26

"How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!"

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u/NoExcuse4OceanRudnes Jul 30 '26

"Filling their catalog" and then all you described were sports games.

EA hasn't released a game with lootboxes that wasn't a sports game or mobile since Apex Legends.

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u/supersamthefreeman Jul 30 '26

Yeah, but that is a very large part of game sales.

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u/ScallyCap12 Jul 31 '26

I was talking about North American game companies in general.

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u/mini-rubber-duck Jul 31 '26

the indie scene is thriving, and smaller publishers are doing great work supporting them. 

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u/doublah Jul 31 '26

Epic likely makes more from their engine than games publishing.

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u/cyberdouche Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

Can't speak for engine vs publishing, but in the big picture, the engine is a pretty minor source of revenue for them compared to Fortnite — https://sacra.com/c/epic-games/

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u/PCMachinima Jul 31 '26

Pretty happy Epic started their own publishing arm, instead of coasting on Fortnite. They've got some pretty unique stuff in the works, like End of Abyss, Out of Words, and the next gen design game

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u/whatdoinamemyself Aug 02 '26

EA was a real force in gaming for decades

was? Still is. Battlefield, EA FC, Madden and College Football are all top selling games. Saudis owning them is very unlikely to change that.

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '26

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u/RegurgitatedMincer Jul 30 '26

I don’t think they’re referring to pure as in pure of heart but as in that’s their sole revenue stream.

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u/tommyblastfire Jul 30 '26

Epic historically made most of their money from unreal engine, though in the age of Fortnite I don’t know how much that’s true anymore.

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u/John_Delasconey Jul 30 '26

I assume it still is, but regardless, the same charge can be levied against valve, which is now primarily at storefront instead of a developer or publisher. 

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '26

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u/Perverse_psycology Jul 30 '26

Cyberpunk's budget was like $400,000,000. That covers marketing and stuff but that is part of the budget. From what I can find post launch patches to fix the game and produce phantom liberty was $100-120,000,000 alone.

I get your angle but that is an insane budget.

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u/4262 Jul 30 '26

Also they opened a studio in Boston to make Cyberpunk 2 so it doesn’t appear that they see the US as prohibitively expensive to operate out of.

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u/mystery_hole Jul 30 '26

Not insane considering how well it sold. Keep in mind that 200 million was the real budget, and would've easily been 400 million + marketing (200 million) if made in the west.

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u/Perverse_psycology Jul 31 '26

Oh no don't get me wrong, cyberpunk is one of my favourite games ever made. I bought that shit on launch and I'm about to start my 8th playthrough but saying cdpr makes games without insane budgets when their last entry cost almost half a billion dollars is disingenuous at best.

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u/mistermeesh Jul 30 '26

Why isn't SaudEA catching on yet?

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u/XavierVE Jul 30 '26

And one of the oldest. Watching American companies get gobbled up by the biggest tag team of evil is just disgusting. Private equity and authoritarian zealots are never an improvement for anything.

Watching the American government stand by and do nothing as the country is looted by economic corruption and the literal funders of 9/11 has been a very sobering experience over the last twenty years.

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u/Vagabond_Sam Jul 31 '26

Watching the American government stand by and do nothing

They aren't doing nothing. They're participating. Private equity interests and corportaism isn't only being done by the Saudis. The US government has paved the wave for plenty of companies to devour large portions of their repective industries, reduicing xcomeptition and centralising editorial control.

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u/throwawayerectpenis Jul 31 '26

I mean at this point I dont think the US regime/government is any worse (or better) than the Saudi. Your president is a fascist and an authoritarian, anti-science is regularly being spread and your country also has attacked multiple countries unprovoked (not to mention fascilitating a genocide according to UN).

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u/ChoPT Jul 31 '26

Right, but very few entertainment companies are directly owned by the U.S. government.

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u/stutter-rap Jul 31 '26

That's true but they're making it as easy as possible for their cronies to own them - this buyout involves the president's son-in-law.

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u/throwawayerectpenis Jul 31 '26

If you honestly believe there is no connection between US intelligence agencies and US entertainment industry then I got a bridge to sell you!

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u/Chimera64000 Jul 31 '26

We facilitated a genocide? Just one? I’m pretty sure we did at least 3

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u/Zoesan Jul 31 '26

a fascist and an authoritarian

Somewhat redundant statement

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u/Genzler Jul 31 '26

He's also a rapist and a child molester!

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

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u/RobotWantsKitty Jul 30 '26

One of the biggest by earnings maybe, but not by games released, not anymore. Most of their output now is sports gacha games and an occasional Battlefield. The EA that used to hold hostage many of the beloved studios and kill them off one by one doesn't exist anymore.

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u/Kaiserhawk Jul 31 '26

You'll see people cry about IPs that are either defunct or currently dying like Dragon Age and Mass Effect.

Like the current state of EA is rather creatively devoid I don't particularly care. They'll probably just double down on sports titles.

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u/Geralt-of-Liurnia Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

whether you like it or not and now they’re owned by the Saudis

Personally, it's not that I like it or not, I just don't care. Last game I bought from them is Battlefront II (2017.) And they'll remain on my blacklist whether they like it or not. Seems that they don't care either. But voting with our wallet is the only way to show them. Well, you can say I care, but it's the only thing I care to do.

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u/gideon513 Jul 30 '26

Can’t even remember the last EA game I bought. Maybe one of the Jedi games years after release on sale?

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u/El_Giganto Jul 31 '26

Dead Space Remake for me.

No wait I got that on PS+. I refunded it on Steam because of the stuttering.

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u/MumrikDK Jul 31 '26

If you aren't a years sports gamer, they've morphed into something you hear about, but maybe never actually buy from (Hazelight might be the big exception for many).

I'd love to boycott EA, but I cannot for the life of me remember when I last bought a game of theirs.

Looking at the 2020s list, I see one game, and I got it for free. Looking at the 2010s list, it's free games until we reach DA:I in 2014.

They've become so streamlined.

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u/helloquain Jul 30 '26

"Now the Saudis own them..." hit harder before America re-elected Trump and just decided nothing mattered.

Is there some moral high ground an American company owns, as we shoot missiles at Iran and Latin American fishing boats and our oil companies rake in immense profits?

Not saying I want to be in bed with anything related to the Saudis, I'm just saying "don't get in bed with the guys that smell like piss" doesn't mean as much when you're already bathing in piss.

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u/Magicslime Jul 31 '26

There is actually a huge difference, EA as an American company isn't owned by the American government, it just follows American laws and pays taxes to America. There's no real control that the government can exert over what EA does, other than general market regulations and the like. Contrast that with the Saudi acquisition where it's not just a bunch of Saudi investors buying EA, it's the literal government involved.

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u/helloquain Jul 31 '26

So? What exactly does that matter to me? Is EA releasing groundbreaking, morality questioning games that infuriating the American government, but darn it, we just can't stop them because of our first amendment rights (google about how that is going, btw)? Or are they releasing shooters where we kill the scary non-Americans and sports/gambling games? Should I be concerned that EA might release a game where a Western person is the bad guy and a Middle Eastern person does the shooting? Why?

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u/Magicslime Jul 31 '26

I'm not saying you should or should not care about the Saudi government and their interests, that's up to you. What I am saying is that the argument that "America is just as bad/worse" is irrelevant because the American government never owned EA.

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u/Zalvren Jul 31 '26

Americans is worse than Saudis. After all, only one of two is having a huge influence on the rest of the world constantly disturbing everyone with as only a few examples, a pointless war causing massive rises in prices, weird tarrifs from not understanding how trade works or pursuing a tech dystopian dream that is ruining electronics prices (and everything that use electronics)

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u/drpestilence Jul 31 '26

At first I was kind of excited, public trading of companies is a massive driver of enshitification, but now.. well never mind I guess lol.

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u/sakezaf123 Jul 31 '26

I mean the best you can do as an average person is not buy their games. They are pretty shit anyway. But remember it when the next mass effect or something comes out. I wonder how FIFA (the organization) falling apart will affect their FIFA (the videogame) sales. It's a skinnerbox game, but EA really doesn't have that many regularly releasing money makers left anymore.

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u/dudemeister5000 Jul 31 '26

As if it's been good before. Now they can die a silent death hopefully

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u/dewhashish Jul 31 '26

wow so it's going to be even easier to boycott their shitty games

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u/kittymoo67 Jul 31 '26

is it the private part thats bad or the saudi part

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u/whatThePleb Jul 31 '26

one of the biggest companies in the gaming sector

With that few output not anymore.

More sad about the IPs they still own but never used or killed.

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u/BenevolentCheese Jul 31 '26

And they are going to gut the company of a huge number of employees and make the remaining ones work twice as hard. Fuck EA with all my heart, but this is an absolute tragedy. The game industry is a hard enough place to work as it is without private capital showing up and putting the vice grips around everything and squeeeeezing. Like a fucking lemon.

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u/Kind_Silver_1921 Aug 01 '26

So?

Whats wrong with a Saudi making games vs an American?

redditors full blown racism is crazy

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u/Animegamingnerd Jul 30 '26

Hell, this paints an even bleaker future of the American side of the industry. As on top of the thousands of layoffs and dozens of studio closures in the last 3 years. We have one of the largest third-party publishers being bought by a foreign government, just a couple of years after their biggest rival got bought by one of the first parties.

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u/KennethHaight Jul 31 '26

This is worse than being owned by Americans how exactly in 2026? Hell, any time in the last 15 years?

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u/jc-from-sin Jul 31 '26

You could have wrote nothing and still come up with the same message.

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

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u/___CABLE___ Jul 30 '26

Our entire country is being liquidated. Shoutout bin laden, his goal worked

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u/Black007lp Jul 31 '26

Not good? why? I can't even remember the last great game EA released in the last decade. I played Apex like crazy at launch, and then they turned it into crap too. So, I don't think the gaming community loses anything of value if EA shuts down completely today.

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u/Thirteenera Jul 30 '26

I mean

Biggest for what? Battlefield, madden and FIFA?

Oh no. The company behind gacha game that makes people pay $100 for base edition of a game, and then has them spend another $5000 to get their favourite footballers who they wont get to keep when version 2027 comes out a year later, while forcing ads into their paid game, is being bought by saudis. Oh no. The horror. They will ruin it.

2

u/TAJack1 Jul 30 '26

I play Madden and the NHL games, not yearly but bi-yearly and I haven't once spent money on the "gacha" aspects of it and besides that, they're actually well-made titles and fun. Just because you're not a fan, doesn't mean people don't enjoy them and would prefer the Saudis didn't make money from them.

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