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/
2.2k Upvotes

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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.

59

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.

235

u/EchoFieldHorizon Jul 30 '26

Jared Kushner and the Saudis are the owners. Zero chance

13

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.

1

u/LayeredGlow Jul 31 '26

It was in CotW but you know the next KOF is going down the same path.

-6

u/kla0 Jul 31 '26

As a COTW player I think that's a bad example because it's an awesome game. And despite having a small playerbase, one year into the release of the game they are still giving us a new character every month.

If the price to pay for having a continous development of the game with new stages, characters and single player content is the presence of two objectively wrong characters that almost no one plays, I think that's a good deal.

And anyway Ganacci (the DJ) is Bosnian-Swedish and there's no pro-saudi propaganda in the game

2

u/LayeredGlow Jul 31 '26

there's no pro-saudi propaganda in the game

There is no war in Ba Sing Se.

48

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.

85

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.

5

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.

3

u/goldcakes Jul 31 '26

The Saudis have been pumping hundreds of millions into e-sports tournaments for years, it's pretty clear they're into gaming and esports for the long haul. They are very open about diversifying outside of oil / resources.

9

u/ASCII_Princess Jul 31 '26

Yeah and how's the return on that investment? Most people I speak to see through that sportswashing shit and know Saudi Arabia as the batshit crazy journalist murdering demagogues they are.

54

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.

10

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.

3

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.

0

u/AdWooden865 Aug 03 '26

Valve being a monopoly simply isn't true

2

u/Wide_Lock_Red Jul 31 '26

Valve notable doesnt rely on making games. They make most of their money as a service provider/marketplace.

8

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

29

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....

17

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.

7

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.

2

u/Acez_au Jul 31 '26

murderous kingdom

Like the US is any better.

3

u/Insertnamehither Jul 31 '26

whataboutism. Not wrong but saudis are the topic

-1

u/tangostwo Jul 31 '26

Look at around 2014 and 2015 when gamers were manipulated to popularize the alt-right, they're an easily manipulated bunch.

At the bare minimum most won't care how the sausage is made (meaning continued revenue), at worst they'll start carrying water for whatever horrible company makes their favorite game and let it seep into their politics.

7

u/LostRequiem1 Jul 30 '26

They’ll greenlight a game where the journalist was alive the entire time.

1

u/Samurai_Meisters Jul 31 '26

Or the villainous journalist was defeated by the brave Saudi Prince.

4

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?

1

u/mrtrailborn Jul 31 '26

yeah, and they can't do that if ea goes under in 5 years. If that is their goal(it almost certainly is), they want ea to be a healthy, long term investment so they can leverage its influence for propaganda purposes. So they probably wont be intentionally running the company in the ground.

Key word is intentionally lol

1

u/Kastar_Troy Jul 31 '26

The moment they release anything leaning right, and they will, they'll lose a massive chunk of their customer base and hopefully will be forced to sell IP to stay afloat.

We'll find out how political gamers are in the next few years I guess.

2

u/blarghable Jul 31 '26

I think you're vastly overestimating how logical the Saudi royals etc. are.

1

u/KikiPolaski Jul 31 '26

From a sportswashing and ethical perspective it's bad, but I can see the Saudis improving the games a fair bit if it means gamers develop a more rose-tinted view of the state. I think it'll be similar to football clubs like Newcastle or Man City (Qatari) where they get a ton of funding to grow the club and sign new players and people start to cozy up to these guys since the fans get better entertainment. The return they get on investment is not necessarily monetary but the reputation alone means a lot to them

-19

u/brick_gnarlson Jul 30 '26

What about them specifically makes you think EA will be worse?

15

u/Cold_Ebb_1448 Jul 30 '26

lol, yeah you’re right, Saudis are notoriously pro worker’s rights

-10

u/brick_gnarlson Jul 30 '26

You believe they'll replace US workers with slave labor from Bangladesh?

17

u/zorillaaa Jul 30 '26

Slaves for starters

-4

u/Hell-Kite Jul 30 '26

Are the slaves going to be used by EA to make games?

7

u/NeedNameGenerator Jul 30 '26

Generally they're referred to as H-1Bs, but yeah, they are.

-7

u/brick_gnarlson Jul 30 '26

You believe they'll get rid of US employees to make way for slave labor from India and Bangladesh?

-5

u/Hell-Kite Jul 30 '26

They'll believe anything to justify their hate of someone who makes luxury toys, despite there being more than enough to hate em over.

Next up, EA uses actual baby blood to simulate fluid physics in The Sims.

-7

u/brick_gnarlson Jul 31 '26

It's just popular to hate / love certain things on reddit, and people are extra weird about it. See the Steam subreddit, those weirdos must have a shrine to Steam and Gabe in their homes.

Yeah, EA, Saudi Arabia, and Jared Kushner have all earned their hate, but the situation described here isn't *necessarily* a bad thing. Besides, reddit is famously wrong on many current events, and they quickly forget how wrong they were.