| ▲ | The sale of Electronic Arts has been finalized(bbc.com) |
| 57 points by 1659447091 2 hours ago | 49 comments |
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| ▲ | tomkarho an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| End of an era. Who do we vote as the worst company ever now? |
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| ▲ | snowram 11 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | EA being voted as the worst company has always been funny to me. The world would be a far better place if it was indeed the case. | |
| ▲ | vunderba 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Well at least as far as gaming companies go, Blizzard always seems willing to throw its hat in the ring. | | |
| ▲ | d3Xt3r 14 minutes ago | parent [-] | | In spite of all the hate, I like that Blizzard's games don't use super nasty DRMs (like Denuvo, which EA, Ubisoft and many others use), all their games work perfectly under Linux (Wine/Proton), and they still host live download links to a game that's nearly three decades old (Diablo 2). Like literally yesterday I set up a new Linux laptop and was about to install Project Diablo 2 under Steam, and was pleasantly surprised to see that the HTTP links to the original D2 and D2 LoD setups were still alive, and the Win 9x-era downloader+installer still works just fine. I mean, how cool is that. And I could even log into battle.net and retrieve my CD keys too. For a 26yr old game. |
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| ▲ | Aardwolf an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I guess it'll keep existing with the name EA? "Public investment fund" doesn't sound too fitting for a game company | |
| ▲ | LocalH an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I disagree. They're not gonna give up the brand recognition to rename it. They specifically wanted "Electronic Arts". EA has Battlefield, FIFA, The Sims, and Madden. Those four alone are probably responsible for 90% of the company's revenue. If anything, now you can say that EA is doubly the worst company, especially in gaming. | | |
| ▲ | krige 41 minutes ago | parent [-] | | EA lost FIFA a few years ago. The games are now "FC". They still sell though. | | |
| ▲ | croes 16 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | They didn’t lose FIFA, they let go. FIFA lost EA | |
| ▲ | LocalH 30 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Shit. I had a feeling I was fucking up on one of those. The other three are still massive franchises, though. | | |
| ▲ | hurfdurf 9 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Another big one is College Football, at least in the US. And in the latest edition they nerfed the offline single-player mode's XP progression. In return they added microtransactions to buy XP points. For offline single-player. Gachaification continues. |
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| ▲ | gspr 31 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Won't Saudi ownership of something bad make it even worse? The era goes on! | | |
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| ▲ | krige an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Because the Saudis leveraged this buyout via a massive loan from JP Morgan, EA's debt is now 10 times higher than it was when it was a publicly traded company: $2.2b to $22b. Turns out the notion that they wouldn’t need humans to make games and they would use AI for most things was a pipe dream and firing staff to be profitable with the huge loan didn't work. Now they are fucked. Every company that spends money to buy up companies died and goes defunct because they keep failing to realize that they have to keep spending loads of money to make money and it doesn’t just roll in after acquiring IPs. Not even mobile slop or live service can save them anymore. |
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| ▲ | neilfrndes an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Bending Spoons seems to be doing fine | | | |
| ▲ | whatever1 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Fuck this corrupt system. You want to buy a company? Bring your own fucking money. Why do we have to pay for this shit? | | |
| ▲ | hgomersall 27 minutes ago | parent [-] | | What? This is JP Morgan on the hook for it if the loan goes bad. | | |
| ▲ | tgv 17 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | You'll have to pay for it anyway. Games will get more expensive, there'll be more micro-transactions, etc. The investors as well as JP Morgan want their money back. | | |
| ▲ | zdc1 3 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I wouldn't be so quick to assume the capital structure of a company influences its product decisions. Lots of well-funded, publicly traded companies are also screwing their customers for the sake of short-term revenue. Want better games? Find them. Support the smaller studios and indie devs that produce quality, or contribute to a FOSS one. | |
| ▲ | whatever1 13 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Realistically EA will never financially recover from this in its current form. Likely they will carve out 1-2 portions of it they can resell and the rest will die. |
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| ▲ | whatever1 15 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | No the taxpayer is. We paid the subprime mortgage bill. We will pay the private equity leverage bill too. | |
| ▲ | lazide 24 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Too big to fail eh? Do you really think if it blows up, the public won’t get sucked in? |
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| ▲ | rockskon 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What a waste of Saudi money. |
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| ▲ | bestouff 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's not a financial investment. They're buying influence. | | |
| ▲ | BLKNSLVR 9 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | So we can expect Battlefield: Iran sometime soon? Starting the propaganda for a ground invasion. I wonder if this one one of the crowd-sourced ideas submitted to the DoD? | | |
| ▲ | sph 5 minutes ago | parent [-] | | What do you mean ‘starting the propagand’? It already was a propaganda vehicle, but it will not be the US behind it this time. |
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| ▲ | nick486 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >They're buying influence. Buying EA for influence? With the reputation EA has in gaming? They're a joke - they're not influencing anything. Its like buying a violin to fix a flat tire. | | |
| ▲ | gambiting 21 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | >>With the reputation EA has in gaming? Do you think your average EA Sports FC or Battlefield player is even aware of that reputation? These games still sell tens of million of copies. Positive influence in Battlefield alone would be huge. | |
| ▲ | charcircuit an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >They're a joke They are known for making games that sell to a mass audience and monetizing them well. It's like calling McDonald's a joke. It doesn't take away that they are a successful business affecting many people in the world. | | |
| ▲ | Morromist 36 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I agree they're good at making games that sell to a mass audience - but I really think that a lot of franchises have wasted a ton of money partnering with EA, which makes poor quality games that are exactly the same as the one they printed out 12 months ago. I haven't heard anyone talking about an EA sports game since the PS1 era and they seem to have completely missed the e-sports era where DOTA and Fortnight made vast sums of money. Don't get me wrong, they've made a ton of money, but I think they could have made still far more in more competant hands. Fabulously greedy FIFA seems to have realized this and is no longer partnering with them. | | |
| ▲ | Jach 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | News to me about FIFA. SA has been trying to gain "influence" in sports overall, and their video game endeavors also seem focused on "e-sports" more than gaming as a whole. I frequently hear complaints about them in fighting game circles, which is a more niche segment of "e-sports". EA is a big step up even if it's not DOTA/LoL levels. | | |
| ▲ | Morromist a few seconds ago | parent [-] | | Yeah. Actually it looks to me like FIFA jumped the gun a bit. They stopped letting EA making their games in 2023, but then choaked and have only released two not-great looking games seemingly meant for low end systems like phones and the Nintendo Switch. I doubt either sold as well as the EA FIFA games. I'll bet they lost a lot of money - I'm sure there's an interesting story about FIFA's efforts to get their own game development up and running. I guess they wanted EA to pay $300 million per year and EA said no, but I doubt FIFA made 50 million on the games they released. |
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| ▲ | tayo42 9 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | If you havent heard of people playing ea sports games since ps1 you're in a bubble. |
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| ▲ | nick486 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yes, and buying McDonald's to influence anything would be a joke too. In fact EA is the McD of gaming, thats a perfect metaphor. If you want influence, there are waaay better value propositions. | |
| ▲ | krige an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If they sold games and were well monetized (not to be confused with heavily monetized), they wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. | |
| ▲ | DimmieMan 39 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | The 'core gamer' bubble has always been bad for this. Sports games sell like hotcakes and have people buy them every year religiously but you never hear about them, sims too. Their other titles were heavy hitters. Their just a seperate audience; EA certainly has influence, just not with people that talk about games. | | |
| ▲ | rockskon 2 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Cultural influence though? Are you going to have MAGA Madden? The Socialist League? |
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| ▲ | ReactiveJelly an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | They make all the sports games. Have you noticed all the sports and Mr. Beast type slop that's like "Wow and here we are inn Dubai / Saudi Arabia whatever and it's beautiful and luxurious and we're driving in Lambos waooowww" If product placement didn't work it wouldn't be an industry |
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| ▲ | kidfiji 34 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Didn't realize gameswashing was a thing like sportswashing, but here we are | |
| ▲ | gmerc 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This. See Bobby Kotik and the Epstein files. |
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| ▲ | LarsDu88 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Does this mean we'll finally get a new Sim City? |
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| ▲ | sph 3 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Are you that eager to give your money to the Saudis and Kushner? There’s a whole world of gaming out there. | |
| ▲ | Morromist 22 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You'll take Skylines 2 and you'll like it. | |
| ▲ | johanvts 36 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | SimCopter really should have priority IMO. | | |
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| ▲ | _carbyau_ an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Between Saudi and right wing influence it seems one publisher will be trying to influence social commentary. |
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| ▲ | lovich an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| This is being bought by Affinity Partners, the same Kushner led group that’s trying to buy out FIFA? Is the Trump family just going to own all of our entertainment and military companies? |
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| ▲ | BLKNSLVR 4 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > Is the Trump family just going to own all of our entertainment and military companies? Are we the Bad Guys? Not any more. Now we're the Worse Guys. |
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