In a deal involving a company owned by Jared Kushner, a company that is basically just the Saudis, and $20B of debt.
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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)
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.
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.
Yes.
If it’s gone public, then generally going private is a bad thing. It’s usually some investors that are going to do something bad with the company.
A company that starts and stays private may be all the better for it (but that’s hardly assured either). If they are a success and didn’t bring a lot of investors, then it generally means they actually care about the work intrinsically.
And the worst get worst-er
101 how to make your company’s bad public image even worse.
Sail the high seas.
I gave up on EA a long time back, and them not making Alice: Asylum was the final nail in their coffin.
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.
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.
Basically Tesla, oof
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!
Yeah but we can also make a FOSS version of PlantsvsZombies & Sims
$1500‽ What the fuck‽
Hell yeah, interrobang!
underrated unicode character
The franchise basically created the microtransaction.
As much flak as Oblivion got for horse armor, the Sims did it first.
I can’t wait to never play either of those games. Thank Ahura Mazda for indie games.
Due to Steam’s Autumn Sale putting the DLC anywhere from 30-50% off, you can currently get the complete game for the low price of only… $993.79.
I wish I was kidding.
And It won’t run.
So many of these DLCs are outright broken. For instance, the For Rent pack very well will corrupt your save file. I’ve had a glitch happen that was a for rent glitch, and I don’t even have the pack. Dine out doesnt function, my wedding stories doesn’t function. The game is still bland with $1000 of DLC.
It’s so bad, they added a toggle to turn off “unused packs” that break your game. You can now just uninstall them through the UI. Stuff you paid for, you can turn it off now, so your game runs more smoothly. Except, when It rolled out, it broke people’s games when they tried to use it, said they didn’t own the pack anymore, so you couldn’t turn a pack back on. Absurd.
Fuck The Sims 4, Fuck EA.
Rust console, is an old game, they released a new version to upgrade to new systems. Free to people who already owned the first gen game. They did this well imo. EA could never.
Oh yeah, they milked that shit as much as they could. Really ruined the franchise with their bullshit.
Don’t forget how many years it went live and the absurd number of expansion packs.
… And?
A shit ton of those couldve been free updates lolWell, their artists did make additional assets though, even if they may be recoloured versions.
The game’s 11 years old, a constant flow of DLC and expansions adds up over time.
So just don’t buy it all at full price I guess.
That’s over 100$ every year in dlc
Or $25 a quarter, and that’s if you buy every single thing they release.
There’s always the whales, but personally I’d skip the “Horse Ranch” expansion, or the one that added Fairies.
I dunno man. Consider it aspiration! Pirate 1500 minimum in EA games.
I wouldn’t even take that shit for free.
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.
It saves so much time for him to be buying a failed company. It cuts out all the leg work he has to do.
If a company bought EA it would make sense if they were buying it for the IP. Someone who actually knows how to run a business could probably turn it around, but why is he buying it does he have another game studio that I’m not aware of?
Truly sad times
Not because of EA, but because of the private equity shit. They want to control everything
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I was thinking about this deal and… I guess it makes sense the Saudis want in on the gaming industry. I recall a long while ago an old article about the industry (probably second hand via Polygon) that noted just how much Saudis whale on mobile and loot box games. It was so disproportionate, their nobility was like 2% of a mobile title’s revenue… literally just a few big families.
So my thinking is, EA, being the kind of shitty company it is, is actually probably pretty popular among Saudi nobility. That and FIFA, of course — imagine pay to win when you have infinite money.
Makes me think why Houthis and the Iranians hate them.
I’m more cynical than that, I think it’s that Kushner and the Saudis have both identified gamers as a group susceptible to be influenced by auth-right messaging, and they want a piece of that.
They lost the FIFA games…
“Lost”.
They lost the fifa name, but fc is basically the same, and it still has all the players and club’s in it soooo… Its just a name change sadly
Just when you thought EA couldn’t suck worse they find a way!
Wait, can I still play Skate or Die! on my Commodore 64?
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.
Why do people always connect saudi to Islam when it’s pretty obvious no muslim other than Saudis likes the Saudi family as they are infamous for their practises. While even a slight hint at israel and Judaism or rich jewish assholes with judaism would get you down voted to the ground even when it’s an appropriate callout.
Edit: I am not challenging the comment, i am just curious as to why. One reason I could think of is that jews are considered an ethnic group so they may not be religious at all but that could apply to any religion no?
Instead of lootboxes, you cut open journalists to get your prizes.
Buy now 20 Jamales one gold drops guaranteed 40% discount.
What are the odds of getting the golden jet in your ultimate team?
Wasn’t that Qatar?
You are not wrong and I am.
It would be interesting if EA pulled away from lootboxes for their owner’s ideological reasons.
You can bet they’ll pull away from LGBTQ+ representation.
Yeah. There’s domestic pressure for this anyway, unfortunately.
Maybe they’ll remove the gambling. Probably not but it would be good if they did.
It doesn’t exactly scream “Shariah Compliant”, no.
Except ea lost the FIFA licence in 2023.
Didn’t as much lose it as they called FIFA (an organization worse than EA)'s bluff when FIFA wanted like a billion for the naming rights.
The religious skirting around the doctrines of their faith for personal gain is a feature, not a bug.
The only part of the religion that matters is the part that lets them treat women as sex slaves anyways.
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?
So we won’t even get a shitty titanfall 3?
Titanfall is cooked. They’re 100% killing the servers. I guess we’ll have to go back to the northstar client.
And now we wait for the potential “spiritual successor” 🤞 .
You mean Diesel Knights?
All I want is more BT 😢
Why does it even matter? Why would you buy it?
I wouldn’t buy it if it was bad, but any form of titanfall 3 would at least be something
EA 0.00052 seconds after hearing Nintendo is the worst game company…
