Actually, it’s pretty clear they are planning on completely gutting this company. They’re taking on debt to buy this deal, which they will put on the company. Their pitch is to eliminate jobs with AI (which they probably know won’t work) which means they’ll cut most of the staff and “replace” it with AI, likely contracts with companies they own so that they can continue to leech off whatever income comes in from game sales. The company will continue to churn out trash and make some money by repeating last year’s sports game this year but now with AI coding until it eventually declares bankruptcy and is either auctioned off to be stripped for what’s left of its parts or simply shutters forever.
I doubt it. The Saudi-Arabian monarchy doesn’t invest in things because they want to make money. They do it for power, image, and influence in the world. They just threw a lot of money into the E-sports world cup in Riyadh. I think they’re buying what’s needed to make Saudi-Arabia a gaming hub. They’re doing the same thing with sports and racing and all sorts of entertainment. For that reason, I doubt they’ll strip EA for parts. All of the competitive games that EA makes will suddenly have tons of prize money and developer-backing for competition and E-sports. And the final big event will always be in SA.
Yea fair there is definitely the sportswashing angle on this, but they are absolutely leveraging debt for this purchase which they will put on the company. Their deck also talks a ton about AI, which is where the AI/stripping angle comes from. As to whether they can just ignore the debt because oil money, that’s I suppose another question entirely.
Split Fiction and everything from Hazelight is fantastic.
…That’s about it.
I guess churning stuff out like F1 or Sims DLC every year isn’t particularly offensive, and they didn’t mess up ME LE too bad. And they have a history of some neat originals.
What I’m saying is EA isn’t really the mega villain anymore. And maybe the longer-term horizon allowed by going private will help?
They’re being sold to the Saudis. The same guys who hacked up a journalist so they will continue the EA tradition of hacking up developers, only now 100% more physically.
Serious question. What difference does this make? They’re already a shit corporate soulless entity, how much worse can things get? I already avoid 99% of their games
My EA internship at one of their Canadian offices was the best experience I’ve had in the gaming industry. I feel for my colleagues there, no doubt the work culture is about to get real toxic for them.
Private equity is the death knell to any brand. For example Joanne’s was sold to private equity. I’ve worked for companies owned by private equity, they are there to extract every last cent for themselves while the brand is whittled away. Any cent that would be invested is instead given to the investors so they can buy new Audis and boats.
I’m not saying EA didn’t deserve it, but this is for sure the end of EA as we’ve ever known it
I’d really like to see American Mcgee somehow get the entirety of the Alice license back under his control. That man has been trying to finish his vision in some fashion for almost 2 decades now. I think he may have finally given up, but dude has had it rough and it’s obviously his lifes work. I’d also love to see someone take the Sims back to its roots and I don’t think anyone is going to get the money required to do it right without getting the name.
Last 2 decades? Mass Effect trilogy, DA: Origins, the last few good NFS games and so on all came out less than 2 decades ago.
I will however admit I have no idea what they’ve made this last decade. I think they had an actually good Star Wars game with no MTX or online some time ago?
arstechnica.com
Gorące