Mega Publisher EA Agrees to $55 Billion Buyout by Saudi Arabia, Silver Lake, Affinity Partners

This was not on my bingo card.

Well I guess they can't get any worse, right? RIGHT!?!?

I'm not sure if I'm even really that surprised.

Oh dear this is not good 😕

Regardless of your feelings on EA, this is gross and a dark day for the games industry. I never cared for their games but now I know I will never touch their games.

It was a bit of a meme when they kept being named worst corporation every year. But you'll receive no argument from me with it's validity under the new ownership.

Said investors are the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF), Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners

That's an impressive collection of scumbags

Wow!
Let's see where this goes!
I'd say there will be a lot more Saudi inspired game coming out

Not on my bingo card, but on my blacklist from now on, though.

What a cartoonishly evil turn of events.

If i were Sony i’d better secure some publishers and IP’s of my own, before the industry gets bought out by other much wealthier companies

Can't say i care. I'm not a big fan of EA's games, except Dragon Age (the older ones) and Mass Effect but i don't plan on buying their future games since BioWare simply lost their ability for making decent games

I'd say I'll never buy another game from EA again but I can't remember the last time I bought one 😆

How absolutely repugnant.

Good thing I don't buy anything from EA anyway~!

Not surprising for EA these days, they have been complete sellouts for the past several generations.

It means I wouldn't even buy a Dead Space 2 remake at this point. And that's a truly odd place to be.

Maybe Microsoft buying Activision was a good thing for many reasons that isn't just consumer related.

Terrible news. I'll leave it at that.

I would care if this acquisition boost the chances for a new Mirror's Edge, Titanfall 3, or Alice Madness Returns remaster. But i really doubt it.

Soo...eh. Nothing is change or lost for me 😀

BioWare was the last shred of interest I had in EA, and I wasn’t feeling too hopeful about that anyway. Easiest boycott ever.

I really wanted to play Battlefield 6 but preorder is cancelled,bye bye EA,enjoy being under tremorists firm rules.

EA FC cover athletes will be selected from the Saudi Pro League

Really not much lost here, at least for me personally. EA’s killed any franchises I cared about.

RIP BioWare, only a matter of time until they're gutted along with a bunch of other studios who don't work on key franchises.

In the future PIF will just own everything.

@EYEBALL I theorised years ago that the merger was partially a protectionist move to protect those IP from going to Amazon, Google or worse.

Should have probably released Battlefield then do the buyout 🤦🏻 I know at least 2/3 of these investors are the scum of the earth.

It’s worth a mention that EA has to take out a $20bn loan secured against itself for the buyout which means layoffs, consolidation and even more aggressive monetisation.

Last game I bought from EA was FC24. And that was the only game in 4 years, so no loss there. That said, this is not great for gaming at all. Activision was bad, but at least they were bought by a way lesser evil then this.

@RadioHedgeFund Yeah, borrowing against yourself to get bought out always works so well.....I had a feeling this was going to happen, and honestly Id say were probably only 3-5 years away from a piecemeal sell off of EA assets.

Goodbye to any artistic project focused on quality an innovation and hello to the most predatory microtransactions possible.

I thought EA couldn't get any worse, I was wrong.

@RadioHedgeFund Yeah, and there's no way that investment firms, specifically, don't look at EA as a whole and think about how to immediately cut costs across the company.

It feels like (potentially mass) layoffs are all but inevitable.

I have a lot of fond memories of EA games. Dating back to the late 80s and early 90s era. Games like the bards tale, skate or die, Abrams battle tank, populous, kings bounty, might and magic, General Chaos, and on and on. And that's not including their sports lineup.

These days for me it's more Madden and NHL, but I imagine those will not be the same either after one or two more iterations.

Say what you will about EA, but they have a long history of titles, both good and bad, and have given gamers decades of content.

Get ready to purchase loot barrels in Saudi Oil Tycoon 2027, 28, 29... 🤣

Restructuring is going to be brutal. I suspect a lot of people will be out of work soon. My condolences. Welp I would get a random EA game on occasion, but it won’t be difficult to move on from them for me. I guess the new sims 4 expansion is my last one. As with the investors they have I am sure they are going to drastically change or cancel the franchise.

Sometimes it feels surreal that a company can be valued so high when the employees aren’t getting a fraction of that (even the ones with good positions barring C-suite).

Sad but not at all surprising.

Silver Lake is also involved in the TikTok deal... nothing nefarious going on here.

Own the media, own the population

@Runex2121 wait, Might and Magic was EA? I recall 3DO and Ubisoft?

Gonna need a time machine to unbuy all the EA games I've bought over the years.

I do wonder what PIF will do with the PGA tour games license, though, considering they own LIV and are hell bent on owning all golf. But i'd be tempted if they made 'Bryson DeChambeau's Big Baby Simulator - Now with 110% more tears'

@PuppetMaster
Oddly enough it does increase the chances of you getting something from those franchises, there will be some layoffs first however.

Personally I want Dead Space 2 and 3 Remake.

maybe we can actually get dead space 2 remade now. or even a return to bad company.

So now we get Ronaldo in every EA game?

I guess the good news is that I’ve been practicing not buying EA stuff for a while. Now that it’s owned by actually evil people and not just cartoon evil people, I’ll not buy anything of theirs again. Watch, other major game companies are next.

I disliked them before and I still do now.
I sincerely doubt that I will notice the difference. And as for the ethical implications, they join pretty much every other corporation in the world in chasing unethical money. You'll have to boycott a lot more than EA if you wish to not be called a hypocrite.

Does that mean we can get a new burnout?

Well, what can I say?

@naruball You could be right, I could have sworn that EA published one of the early ones but its been a long while.

Edit: It was ported to the Genesis in 91 via EA. I had to look at the picture of the cart, but its clearly an EA game. I remember that eras carts because they had the silly yellow tab. I am not sure if it was published in non-north american regions by EA though.

@Americansamurai1 honestly a sequel to burnout paradise would be great

@LogicStrikesAgain you would think they would have already picked up square enix management at Sony is no too smart though. We heading to an inevitable streaming future and you see that all of the publishers will want their own streaming service like they did in the film industry, Disney, HBO, Netflix, Paramount, ect. Sony needs to start preparing so they can have a strong line up of content.

Sooooo.... more lay-offs coming in the not-so-distant future?

I'm kinda hoping they do a SE/Embracer and either sell off or release studios into the wild to either be independent OR acquired by slightly less scummy big labels.

This doesn't change my already...not positive opinion of the company

lol I mean for me… this is a lateral move. EA was already the worst. Kind of hard to go lower when you’re already at rock bottom.

I doubt I would ever notice the difference, the only interest I have in EA games is KoTOR remake, but it's pretty much abandonware now.

Someone should tell Obi-Wan we’ve finally found a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than the Mos Eisley Cantina

Anyone who genuinely thinks EA were the epitome of evil were stuck in 2012. We’re about to see exactly how evil EA can be.

@Dalamar The KOTOR remake is Saber Interactive and Sony, pretty sure EA isn't involved at all.

The nicest thing I could've said about the EA of the last 10-15 years is that I didn't really care about them, as opposed to actively detest them. However, this investment is about as grotesque and repulsive as any I could've ever imagined. I know people might argue there's questionable money in many companies, but we all have to decide for ourselves where we draw the line. Let's just say this acquisition is so far beyond mine that even the memory of a line has faded.

@kmtrain83 jamal khashoggi

@kmtrain83 the fact that you say "are there news articles" proves that you know that such things as “news articles" exist. It's crazy that you know this and still have no clue about any of these people. Absolutely stunning!

@twitchtvpat at this point I would settle for a remake of 3 and revenge.

This doesn't sound good.

@Runex2121 thanks for the clarification. Might & Magic is by far my favourite franchise, so it was a bit surprising to hear.

@LifeGirl chasing profit through less than ethical means is one thing, what's happening with Saudi Arabia is far worse.

@CielloArc But what happen if half if not every creative people who made those franchise got layoff. You think the Arabs and their partners still care to spend their money for a new Mirror's Edge, Titanfall 3, or even niche title like Alice Madness after they spent $55 Billion to buy the company?

I really doubt we gonna see Dead Space 2 & 3 remake either. The franchise is pretty much dead and buried after DS 1 remake only sold 2 million copies with 5 million copies of minimum target sales. The old and new EA executives who only cares how to make a lot of profits aren't gonna say "Hey remember Dead Space 1 remake that sold like crap? Let's remake DS 2 and 3 too. I'm sure they will sold like hotcakes".

never liked ea after they bought origin and retired the ultima series..

Just when you think EA cannot plumb new lows. Someone they manage to find a way.

My pre order for Battlefield 6 has now been cancelled.

This is not great. I play EA wrc rally daily and I love it and I'm so glad that the rally franchise has moved to another dev. I'm still buying BF6 because as far as I'm concerned I am supporting the devs that made the game and not EA so I'm hoping some of my money makes it way towards those guys who I don't think are probably happy about this either. It puts a lot of gamers in a moraly and ethically tricky place to be..

@ILikeStake “Own the media own the population.” Great comment. Sadly most just consume it uncritically, which makes it so insidious.

Somehow EA became even worse

@LifeGirl There are degrees of horribleness. Everyone can and should have their red lines. It’s tempting to say everything is bad so whatever, but how the consumer spends their money is one of the key pieces of power the population still has in a capitalist world.

@kmtrain83 I'm not going to elaborate, as I don't feel like this comment section is the place for that. As others have pointed out, PIF is not just a Saudi company, it is quite literally the same as the Saudi government. That should be information enough, and if not, their "issues" (this feels too trivial a word for it but anyway) are widely documented.

@Northern_munkey exactly my thinking. I was going to hold off on BF tho but I may just not get it at all at this point as I can't dedicated the time to a game like like. I'm glad to hear that EA doesn't own the WRC franchise anymore as this is a genre I would miss playing. Shame about PGA tho as you know I loved that game but I can't support EA or "Elctronic Arabia" anymore.

For all the people who dont want to buy BF6 because of this investment, please dont buy Hell let loose:Vietnam. Unless you have a working brain and know how to take out tanks and build garrisons.

Thanks in advance.

@Kidfunkadelic83 yes I'll miss the golf game too. Like the new avatar mate 👍

Selling their souls to the Saudis? Damn, this year's edition of FIFA is realistic!

I was looking forwards to battlefield as well. COD black ops number 3 in all but name it is then

Yeah that was my first thought as well. If there was any lingering doubt that Dragon Age as a series was completely dead in the water, I imagine this news utterly clinches it.

Would it be too naive to float the notion that the former talent from Bioware might be able to regroup as a new, independent dev studio that could create spiritual successors to ME and DA that are just different enough so as not to incur the wrath of EA's legal department?

The worst people just bought the worst game developer. The only winners will be the executives and shareholders.

@Northern_munkey yeah thought i change it up.

@Andee Most of the talent that made Mass Effect and Dragon Age great have been gone for several years. A group of ex-Bioware devs are working on a game called Exodus that looks very Mass Effect-like.

@Runex2121 Yup. This sell out was always in the books. That why they split the company in 2023 into ea entertainment and ea sports. To make it easier to sell of parts of the company.

@IntrepidWombat ah, so they're already on the case then — that's good to know, thanks

@Northern_munkey
We had a conversation over the weekend where I said that I always try to look at the content of the game, and not things surrounding it like individual devs (/actors/authors) etc opinions.

This though, is one step too far for me, particularly as I am sure that game content / messaging will be negatively affected here.

@ShogunRok
Gutted for Bioware - I really enjoyed DAV last year.

And with that, soon the thing formerly known as Bioware will be put out to pasture soon

@Andee the former talent who made the original Dragon Age and Mass Effect likely havent been at EA for a decade now hence the dropoff in games with Andromeda and Veilguard

@Rich33 I can understand your concerns.

I get why Silver Lake and the Saudis are bad, but what about Affinity? Not like I needed more convincing not to buy EA games new anymore…my last exception will be Plants vs. Zombies

I can't even remember the last EA game that I bought/played, so it'll be very easy for me to never touch any of their games going forward. I miss the old days of EA, when they made incredible games like Road Rash on the Genesis and 3DO.

@Xeno_Aura huh? I knew about Saber, but had no idea that Sony is involved, I thought KOTOR remake was announced when EA still had monopoly on SW games. Well, good to know, though I still doubt remake will ever see the light of day.

Kushner is also Trump's son in law, for that matter.

@pyrrhic_victory Yeah, was going to emphasize that since the article just says “advisor”. Kushner has that pasty quiet no-conscious evil thing going on. Odds are high Trump himself has a stake in Affinity.

I bet the PIF are loving the premise of the new Battlefield (the complete collapse of NATO).

2025 is the year where the games industry decided to f***ing die or what?

Was finally going to buy another Battlefield after so long of skipping it. Just canceled my preorder. As for Mass Effect, it was going to be garbage anyway. If you still want something like it, Exodus and The Expanse are too games that scream old Bioware.

Sure would be nice to put them out of business!

They have failed to deliver on all of their best IPs. I don't think that they even have a FIFA license (but I don't follow that) so someone else can take up the mantle of best Football/Soccer game.

If the NFL can do multiple licenses then maybe we could get some competition again like in the NFL2K days.

I wonder how the Saudis feel about videogame reviewers/journalists giving their games bad reviews.

Utterly vile in every conceivable way. Just about the worst people on Earth. There is no scenario in which I can see myself ever buying another EA game. I refuse to support a homicidal, homophobic regime. Its culture washing will never change what it is.

Thank you for publishing this and keeping us informed. I'm thankful there are still small studios with artistic vision. Hopefully these can continue filling the gap.

This news makes me super excited to try the new Mass Effect game built from the ground up with migrant workers...

Pretty confused with the extreme negative reaction.. Could we draw up a list of all other gaming companies, their affiliates, and the country they reside in and see what atrocities they are committing or complicit in, and then see whether gamers here still uphold their virtue signalling? I don't have that information yet, but hoping all the well informed people in here surely know.. Yet I still feel I could bet there is some hypocrisy here.

@JustMyOpinion as far as I know, the Saudi monarchy is their government and is going to be in control of EA, at least partially.

You may not like other governments and their actions. But generally, the government is not in control of a videogame company, at least in the west. I am honestly not sure how much, if any, that the Chinese government controls its game development. Or how much, if at all, Russia controls its game development.

A government that controls media influences how its citizens think.

@Cvantez Exactly. Seemed worth mentioning that their relationship is closer than - "used to be an advisor for Trump during the first term," which was already four years ago.

@WhoderMan Hi mate, I hear you, but governments have more influence than we think. This isn't the platform to go too in depth but still, if boycotts are really about government ties or human rights issues, then the standard should apply consistently. China’s Black Myth is state-approved, France part-funded Clair Obscur while still to this day holding neo-colonial influence in Africa, US studios have worked with the Pentagon on military shooters, and Microsoft has deep ties with Israel - which is formally accused of genocide at the ICJ. Yet nobody calls for boycotts of those games. I don't particularly like Saudi, any more than other corrupt governments, but there is a lack of consistency here, and appears to be just selective outrage.

@JustMyOpinion I understand everything that you're saying and appreciate the fact that this isn't the best venue for the discussion. I also appreciate civil discourse whether we agree or disagree!

I think that this buyout is above and beyond government ties, though. It will start with little to no change but within 20-30 years we will see the bigger picture.

It is selective outrage and there are PLENTY of things in the world to be upset about. But this will be more than mere governmental influence. Kushner and the Saudis aren't buying this cause they love EA. If I remember correctly, they were also looking to buy Ubisoft. They just want a large foothold in Videogame Entertainment, for profit and to push their agendas to a young audience.

Saudi blood money might actually be an improvement for EA. I just refuse to believe they could possibly get any worse than they already are.

@RadioHedgeFund Yeah that sounds about right with similar thinking.

It will all contribute to the fall of our civilisation. It is not about ‘if’ but ‘when’ this will happen. ; )

@WhoderMan I do understand what you're trying to say. Would have been nice to chat to you more, there is plenty to be said, both about these currupt governments and the inconsistency in the ethics of these gamers, but again, this isn't the best place.. Take it easy mate.

@JustMyOpinion The outrage over Saudi is not selective without reason. This regime is beyond the pale. If you are informed you can draw your own red line regarding what you will and won’t support. It isn’t all or nothing, and not all offensive regimes/corporations are equivalent, despite not being clean.

Having Kushner involved is just the kicker.

@JustMyOpinion You too, boss. Enjoy your week!

Can't wait to hear what bonus Android Wilson is going to get

all this is missing is EA announcing that Vladimir Putin and the ghost of Henry Kissinger and Jimmy Saville have been added as board members

Hell yeah! Love that EA is going private. Maybe I’ll start buying their games again. This is a HUGE win for gaming. Putting the fiduciary interest of stockholders ( literal legal requirement) over making a truly great title, is no more ( at least for EA).

@Fartingale : now then, now then, now then !

Yea, I don't think I'm going to be supporting the torture and human rights violations of others. Bye bye EA. It's been a long and bumpy ride, but all things must come to an end.

Pretty soon the EA sports logo intro will be:

"Eh-el-el-eh-aech"
...in his name!

@wiiware Amen! I am predicting that all the people claiming they are going to boycott will find something else to be outraged about next week. Once the next great ea game comes out nobody is going to care about the investors that financed it.

As far as business ethics go I see it for what it is. If an investor that is not ethical buys a company ( and to be clear, I couldn’t care less who bought them if it leads to better gaming) people get outraged. Where is the same outrage for the people on the team that take amphetamines, uppers ( meth cocaine etc) to stay up longer and focus on the coding, graphics etc..? Seems like selective outrage to me.

I was planning on getting Battlefield 6 in the future, but likely not now. The only EA games I buy are the Hazelight games. This whole thing is a shame.

My tax dollars are already going into the Trump family's pockets. I am not going to willingly give Kushner any more on top of that.

@johncalmc boycott? Why? Just curious

So among the many desparate arguments for the Microsoft purchase of Activision Blizzard was the one as one of the BIG US companies woe betide if it fell into foreign hands!🤯😱
But cos of "free" jets etc.,100% Saudi ownership is okay now?
E.A. as always in the modern era shooting itself in the foot & calling it progress.🙄

Female players removed next fifa then

Silver Lake bought the company I used to work for. Real life scumbags. Treated our long term clients like dirt then butchered the company when we complained.

@kmtrain83 It's not really about making a point, it's more about what I personally feel comfortable with.

I don’t buy all that many EA games anymore so I don’t feel strongly about this but I don’t see this ending well for developers or gamers.

I could contain my disappointment in a very small jar in if just EA crumbled but this might presage a broader intervention by the American government. It’s worth keeping in mind yesterday the president announced he was going to levy a 100% tax on foreign made movies.

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-impose-100-tariff-movies-made-outside-country-2025-09-29/

"Our movie making business has been stolen from the United States of America, by other Countries, just like stealing candy from a baby," Trump said in a post on his Truth Social.
However, it was not immediately clear what legal authority Trump would use to impose a 100% tariff on foreign-made films.

The culmination of a cartoonishly evil company's awful legacy.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare 1) I’m sure you mean what the figurative f. If I have to explain a literal f to you, your parents failed. 2) I’m talking about all the selective moral outrage. The whole “well they are bad people that hurt communities so we can’t buy games from companies they buy” comments. The same people don’t seem to care about other immoral stuff that goes on in the gaming industry. Seems extremely hypocritical, if not dishonest. Also I’m not sure about what bots you are talking about. I don’t think this site uses bots.

So, what is that mean?
The only the game I still purchased from EA is The Sims 4 DLC.
Will this situation affect The Sims 4 game future?