Well that’s the end of EA. The owners will tear it apart and bleed it dry.
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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People have been predicting the death of EA for over twenty years.
Meanwhile, they release another Madden and another FIFA and another Sims and another Star Wars, then mint themselves another $7B. Nevermind that all of these games are just reskinned copies of the games they've been releasing going back to the mid-90s.
Yesn't.
That may have been somewhat true in the past, but it is hard to articulate just how big of a hole they are in right now. The leveraged buyout has pushed EA's debt to over $20Billion USD.
They make that money back or they might not, but they are going to absolutely pillage and destroy the company in the process. The word that often follows "leveraged buyout" is "bankruptcy". It's a tale as old as corporate history.
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Another Sims? Don't be daft. They'll release another Sims DLC and get all the money with much less effort.
Seriously, 4 has been a cash cow for over a decade now, with biannual expansion packs.
I did a buad report on EA once. TLDR they're basically Martin Shkreli but a corporation.
Like Martin Shkreli in that they'll increase the price of a life-saving drug 20x without consequences, or like Martin Shkreli in that they'll go to prison for defrauding rich investors?
Seriously fucked up that the second was considered a crime, but not the first, in Shkreli's case.
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Do you know, why EA is the worst company in the whole US of A? It's because Ubisoft is in France.
I don't care what they do. Even if I hadn't already been boycotting EA for 10+ years, I'd never install Saudi-owned ring-0 "anticheat" software on any of my computers.
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They paid 53 bil for something that has only 300 mil /year in profits?
A 200 year ROI (interest on the 20 bil loan for the leveraged buyout that ea itself will need to pay) doesn't seems too bad
Well my days is not buying EA products are certainly coming to a middle.
Sell 700 one million dollar skins
Don't tempt the whales
Anyone who did not see this coming is an idiot.
EA is... in a loooot of debt lol. Thats why they needed a buy out.
It takes a lot of money to make the same games for 25 years straight, change the front logo, the names of the players, make tiny tweaks and market it.
Maybe they need to start releasing Sims 2025, 2026, etc.
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They are in a lof of debt because of the buy out.
They're also in a lot of debt from making dog shit for the last 15 years.
They've been making dogshit for a lot longer than that.
They used to have good games in addition to the dogshit ones. Now it's just the dogshit. Though to me the cutoff was 14 years ago, when they made the last Mass Effect game.
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Kind of yes, but actually no.
We just see that debt now, its explicit.
EA ... was subject to a leveraged buy out, that they sought out. They did this... because they needed cash, now.
What that means is that their internal financials were an absolute shit show... that they had, up untill that point, basically just legally lied about, hid, downplayed.
They fluffed up their balances and returns and cashflows in ways that are legal to do, but if you actually do due dilligence, you could read the writing on the wall.
Its basically the same as any other US company that got bought out / sold itself to private equity in the last 10 or 15 years.
Difference is, EA is so huge, it had to be bought out by essentially a sovereign wealth fund.
They've not had a lot of success in the 2020s except for sports games they obviously pay a lot of money in licensing fees for.
Leveraged buyouts should be illegal
A lot of people are glancing over the fact that now a country is running this Video Game company. I'm not betting that the Saudis will: Open up old IPs, take care of labor costs, respect the players, not install spyware onto customer's machines and report their party affiliation or any government secrets stored on said machine.
If you didn't trust EA being run by a private company then I bet you won't trust EA being ran by a government.
Even worse: Jared Kushner is involved as well.
Games are essentially attack vectors with kernal level access to your computer.
The united States is looking at doing something about Chinese gaming companies, yet we are okay with handing over what is essentially a back door over to the Saudis.
I just think its weird what malware we are okay with.
Games are essentially attack vectors with kernal level access to your computer.
Some games, with very specific anticheat. Let's not spread misinformation.
That being said, yeah I don't get it either - I refused to play Valorant for this reason.
All games with kernel level anticheat, that isnt't open souce.
There, fixed it for you.
Kernel level AC is literally a root kit, in some cases also a boot kit.
It has never made any sense to allow this shit on your computer. Sorry if marketing convinced you otherwise.
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Bloodbath... Saudi Arabia
How literally are we talking here?
Unnecessary employees will be invited to the nearest consulate
Shit company gets worse
So, destroy its game making capabilities and just make money for the next 20 years from of microtransaction on existing content.
Kinda of a natural progression of AAA game publishers given the way things are nowadays.
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CEO Andrew Wilson is set for a massive payday. The company’s last SEC filing before going private pointed to a $77 million payout for the last fiscal year, double the number that was previously reported.
One of the finer aspects of unfettered capitalism.
That's actually crazy.
For reference, Split Fiction's development cost was ~$40 million USD over ~3-4 years, ~75 devs. That's one of EA's better games, and not cheap.
Yearly, $77 million could basically fund Battlefied development (with BF6 rumored to cost $400 million, maybe?).
It's 11% of what they're looking to cut!
Even if the rationale for the bonus is "Andrew Wilson put Battlefield back on track," that's still a good chunk out of the profits of ~500M of BF6 game sales so far.
It's 1% of EA's entire yearly revenue they last reported, $7.84B.
The liquidation shall continue until ~~moral~~ stakeholder wealth improves
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But the CEO’s job will be okay right?
Just wait for the article that the CEO is getting a $700 million bonus.
Well, there goes the last remnant of possibility for a dragon age or mass effect revival.
Replaying Dishonored 2, still mad about Arkane.
It’s like the long game is to kill gaming from two directions. Game Studio deaths and making PC components unaffordable for working class.
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Imagine of lots of game developers that gets fired now goes out and start working on indie-games.
Going indie from scratch means going no income for years for a project that may never succeed, not everyone can afford the risk. Existing indie studio have very limited hiring capacity compared to the amount of people getting laid off from big companies.
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I would say "never has there been a more moral case for pirating the sh*t out of everything this company makes", since they always exploit and lay off their workers after projects are done, shut down studios, etc...
...but most of their stuff is recycled sports drek, so don't even pirate it. Just ignore it, and tell everyone you know how horrible EA is and has always been, and who its new owners are. Hopefully they'll never buy their crap again either.
Judging by MBS's steam account, the next Battlefield is going to be an extraction shooter about the coalition of the willing securing pipelines and putting out oil field fires. Also Tehran doesn't get nukes in the game, it got nuked 20 years ago, and this is framed as a Bad Thing With A Silver Lining. The Line is your primary hub city and your ground vehicles are things like solar powered Abrams and cybertruck but good
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Gaming layoffs are now on track to eclipse 2024 and 2025 combined.
And? What fucks are there left to give about a publically malicious/murderous government buying a publically malicious company which publically destroys their creatives ability to stay alive in this capitalist shitscape?
I want the heart and soul of those studios (the creatives) to create a tsunami of indie studios to revive the long lost connection between the gamers and the makers.
We have to support indie devs if we want gaming to be better for all involved.
Mass Effect team must be shitting bricks.
Should have made something worth playing in the last 10+ years then.
These legacy studios with expensive old heads are going to be a thing of the past.
Thank you for reminding me that just like Todd Howard whoever is in charge of Mass Effect has seriously shit the bed and deserves to get fired (though it'll never happen, instead their studio will get gutted and they'll get a raise).
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