Good riddance. I hope by "private" they mean we won't hear from them again--they're a very private company, they keep to themselves, and never say anything. That sort of private.
(I know that's not what it means)
this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2025
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Hopefully it’s a leveraged buyout and this is the death of EA.
Edit: Haha I clicked the link and it really is an LBO.
It is a leveraged buyout.
Yup I added an edit. LBOs should be illegal man. Just search how many companies have been bought like this and then driven out of business.
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(1 replies)
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.
This shit needs to be made illegal. All it does is kill off businesses. Sears and JoAnn Fabrics both died to this trash.
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(1 replies)
Basically Tesla, oof
It’s the workers who pay the price for the greed of the CEOs, shareholders, and the new owners.
Just when you think EA can't get any shittier, they find another way to lower the bar.
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.
Toys R Us anyone?
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(8 replies)
EA 0.00052 seconds after hearing Nintendo is the worst game company…
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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Couldn't happen to a nicer company
EA has basically been dead to me for a very long time, even though I know a couple of people who work there.
While the whole Saudi Arabia / Private Equity angle is terrible, part of me thinks/hopes/wishes that this is part of their whole sports-washing angle - and there is a slim but non-0 chance that there will be an improvement in the quality of their studio output over the next few years.
I’ll continue to avoid buying their games, but it would be nice to see those that still do not getting nickel-and-dimed as hard as they currently are.
Who knows, there is also the potential that this buyout backfires and Saudi’s human rights abuses become even more public knowledge as a result?
When times are as bad as they currently are, we have to hope.
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(1 replies)
Is this better or worse than being a public company?
This specific instance? Worse.
It's being bought by blood money (Kushner's $2billion investment/bribe to hush up the US government about the brutal murder of a US resident journalist at the hands of the Saudis). Plus a country that somehow is even more squeamish about content than the US is in charge - look forward to way more censorship.
Reddit, and by extension Lemmy, have this infatuated vision of how private companies are actually great for customers because whenever somebody asks about Steam the explanation given is that if this were a publicly traded company it would be horrendous but because it's private everything is perfect and there are rainbows inside their offices.
The truth is EA will be just as aggressively profit driven as it already is, the new owners will try to reduce costs just like always, and IPs that sell more will continue to be prioritized just like before.
Essentially a private company can be owned by a dickhead, or a nice person who's not all about profitmaxing. A publicly traded company is forced to maximize shareholder value.
Valve as a publicly traded company would quickly become another EA/Microsoft/Whatever, because it's only the next quarter that matters. Valve under GabeN has been built to bring in large, and yet sustainable profits.
EA's new owners are going to be the absolute worst. So it's going to be a worse company than before.
Consider that Erik Prince's murder-for-hire company is private. So is Xitter now that Melon bought it.
So it's not that private companies are better, but rather that they have the capacity to be better. And it all depends on the owners.
The reason Steam is less bad is that its president is less of a dick. The reason that works is because he's not beholden to other shareholders, because he's the majority owner himself. If they were publicly owned, he wouldn't have the liberties to make long-term decisions instead of (only) short-term money grabs.
But his decisions most likely aren't the result of some bleeding heart morality so much as a less shortsighted profit calculation. Newell is still a billionaire, and not just because of the assets Valve owns. He apparently has several ships, which is several more than most people can afford. He also owns a custom yacht manufacturing company, which is also a lot more than most people can afford (both the products and the company). He might not be as all-around awful as other billionaires, but you don't get this rich through your own work alone.
Private ownership isn't a guarantor of customer-friendly behaviour. It just eliminates one factor forcing companies to prioritise profits, but it can't replace customer protection regulations and oversight.
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(4 replies)
Depends. This is a leveraged buyout and there are countless examples of other companies bought like this and they don’t last long.
They take on massive debt to buy it. Then they shift that debt to the company they bought and away from the individuals. Then that company is crippled paying down interest so they can’t innovate (not that EA did), then they’ll have to cut costs and the product will diminish. Likely pay out billions in dividends to the buyers can make profit and in 5-10 years EA will go bust or get sold again.
The banks will be left holding the bag, but probably covered their loses by that time so can write off the rest of the debt.
Public companies have a hard wired compulsion to increase value for shareholders. Every single decision is made with profit in mind. In the best cases you get milquetoast, inoffensive material everyone can enjoy. Ultimately, this leads to a relentless and aggressive pursuit of endless growth at any cost.
Private companies can take a loss here and there, they don't have to report a bad quarter and so they can plan ahead. Which allows them to do two, non explains things. That approach allows them to build a robust and loyal consumer base which is quite valuable. So they'll sell it off again and let the public companies milk them dry. They can also get up to some horrendously evil shit behind closed doors in a foreign country where the laws only apply to people who aren't the ruling family and never have to answer for it. Though that kind of thing is usually reserved for like, chemical manufacturers and labor intensive luxury food markets. It may be that the Saudis are just diversifying and want a propaganda mouthpiece. Or one of the royals REALLY likes FIFA.
Hard to say.
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(4 replies)
Y'all shouldn't be buying EA games anyway.
At this point, I see pirating The Sims as a moral imperative. There’s no reason the full game should be ~$1500.
I downloaded every EA game ever made and I don't even want to play any of them. I have the files imprisoned on my computer, forever. Bwahahaha!
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(25 replies)
Sail the high seas.
For a preview of what happens, look at the embracer buyouts. This is essentially a funeral
Yup. Or Toys R Us, or Debenhams (UK), or any other number of LBOs which led to the death of the company.
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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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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(6 replies)
E A Sports. It’s in the shame!
going private with debt is a sign of upcoming bankruptcy, possibly dissolution. but with Kushner and the Saudis, probably more a sign of money laundering
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I gave up on EA a long time back, and them not making Alice: Asylum was the final nail in their coffin.
Just when you thought EA couldn’t suck worse they find a way!
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.
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.
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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Truly sad times
Not because of EA, but because of the private equity shit. They want to control everything
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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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The new FIFA will be crazy. To celebrate a goal, you can now kill and dismember a sideline reporter.
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