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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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.
Toys R Us too 🤬
Basically Tesla, oof
It’s the workers who pay the price for the greed of the CEOs, shareholders, and the new owners.
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!
$1500‽ What the fuck‽
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 $1000 of DLC.
It’s so bad, they added a toggle to turn off “unused packs” that break your game. You can now just uninstall them through the UI. Stuff you paid for, you can turn it off now, so your game runs more smoothly. Except, when It rolled out, it broke people’s games when they tried to use it, said they didn’t own the pack anymore, so you couldn’t turn a pack back on. Absurd.
Fuck The Sims 4, Fuck EA.
Rust console, is an old game, they released a new version to upgrade to new systems. Free to people who already owned the first gen game. They did this well imo. EA could never.
Why you might as well sail and get a fixed pack for basically free.
Or just find a better game. There are plenty of games where you’re not expected to pay and download additional files to have rain.
The Command and Conquer series has only a few or no equivalent right now, as far as I know.
There is INZOI, which should be superior to the Sims series, but its hardware requirements are very demanding.
Despite the existence of superior racing sims, some people still play NFSU2 but enhanced with mods.
I’m saying because in some places people like the games more than the corporation owning those titles (and sitting on, while keep on selling the games with the loot boxes), they’ll just pirate those copies.
Hell yeah, interrobang!
underrated unicode character
Oh yeah, they milked that shit as much as they could. Really ruined the franchise with their bullshit.
Don’t forget how many years it went live and the absurd number of expansion packs.
The game’s 11 years old, a constant flow of DLC and expansions adds up over time.
So just don’t buy it all at full price I guess.
That’s over 100$ 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.
cries in Paradox
… 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.
And…? Cyberpunk, monster hunter, witcher, … All got visual updates in their lifetimes :p
Witcher, baldurs gate, monster hunter, gta5 and more got actual content updates too
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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.
If people are willing to pay it…
I dunno man. Consider it aspiration! Pirate 1500 minimum in EA games.
I wouldn’t even take that shit for free.
Yeah but we can also make a FOSS version of PlantsvsZombies & Sims
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?
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.
I’d love to see the sports leagues pull their licenses
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)
Just when you thought EA couldn’t suck worse they find a way!
Holy shit, that is a lot of debt… EA is going to be absolutely gutted. I imagine the ones gutting it will be paid generously for the trouble though.
It’s only about 20% debt.
The word “only” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Leveraged buy outs are usually at least 50% debt.
And the worst get worst-er
101 how to make your company’s bad public image even worse.
Truly sad times
Not because of EA, but because of the private equity shit. They want to control everything
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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.
Reddit, and by extension Lemmy, have this infatuated vision of how private companies are actually great for customers because whenever somebody asks about Steam the explanation given is that if this were a publicly traded company it would be horrendous but because it’s private everything is perfect and there are rainbows inside their offices.
The truth is EA will be just as aggressively profit driven as it already is, the new owners will try to reduce costs just like always, and IPs that sell more will continue to be prioritized just like before.
Essentially a private company can be owned by a dickhead, or a nice person who’s not all about profitmaxing. A publicly traded company is forced to maximize shareholder value.
Valve as a publicly traded company would quickly become another EA/Microsoft/Whatever, because it’s only the next quarter that matters. Valve under GabeN has been built to bring in large, and yet sustainable profits.
EA’s new owners are going to be the absolute worst. So it’s going to be a worse company than before.
Consider that Erik Prince’s murder-for-hire company is private. So is Xitter now that Melon bought it.
So it’s not that private companies are better, but rather that they have the capacity to be better. And it all depends on the owners.
The reason Steam is less bad is that its president is less of a dick. The reason that works is because he’s not beholden to other shareholders, because he’s the majority owner himself. If they were publicly owned, he wouldn’t have the liberties to make long-term decisions instead of (only) short-term money grabs.
But his decisions most likely aren’t the result of some bleeding heart morality so much as a less shortsighted profit calculation. Newell is still a billionaire, and not just because of the assets Valve owns. He apparently has several ships, which is several more than most people can afford. He also owns a custom yacht manufacturing company, which is also a lot more than most people can afford (both the products and the company). He might not be as all-around awful as other billionaires, but you don’t get this rich through your own work alone.
Private ownership isn’t a guarantor of customer-friendly behaviour. It just eliminates one factor forcing companies to prioritise profits, but it can’t replace customer protection regulations and oversight.
Gabe Newell is basically a benevolent dictator. Valve is proof that private companies have the potential to not completely suck and publicly traded ones basically always seem to suck.
Its just that usually private ones suck as well.
The issue at any scale beyond “local store” is that eventually your customers and transactions become impersonal numbers on a sheet. It’s hard to remember the human on the other side when there’s just too many of them for our brain to actually process as such.
At that point, the drive for profit inherent to our system and essential for subsistence can’t be checked by intuitive empathy alone any more. It requires conscious effort, diligent reflection and the will to be customer-friendly.
When the least scrupulous end up having the most money and owning majorities of private companies, it’s hardly any wonder most of them suck.
He apparently has several ships, which is several more than most people can afford.
That number for the rest of us being, of course, none.
Well, I can probably afford a small RC boat or something. Not quite the same caliber that could carry humans on the ocean, but more than nothing I guess.
Dangit, now I want to look up how much a model yacht would cost and if I could afford to brag “I’ve got a small fleet of yachts”…
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.
Depends. This is a leveraged buyout and there are countless examples of other companies bought like this and they don’t last long.
They take on massive debt to buy it. Then they shift that debt to the company they bought and away from the individuals. Then that company is crippled paying down interest so they can’t innovate (not that EA did), then they’ll have to cut costs and the product will diminish. Likely pay out billions in dividends to the buyers can make profit and in 5-10 years EA will go bust or get sold again.
The banks will be left holding the bag, but probably covered their loses by that time so can write off the rest of the debt.
Depends on your perspective.
This is bad from a business, creativity, and human rights standpoint.
However, it’s good that a shitty company like EA with predatory products is going to be even more exploitative and predatory from here on out.
I enjoy watching the useful idiots get taken for a ride.
Haven’t bought an EA game in over a decade. Don’t intend to change that anytime soon.
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.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer company
Hopefully it’s a leveraged buyout and this is the death of EA.
Edit: Haha I clicked the link and it really is an LBO.
It is a leveraged buyout.
Yup I added an edit. LBOs should be illegal man. Just search how many companies have been bought like this and then driven out of business.
@dependencyinjection Let’s hope their IPs are bought by companies that actually know what to do with them.
I haven’t bought an EA game since Mass Effect 3. This is just one more reason to never give them my money.
The first EA game I got was M.U.L.E. (circa mid 80’s) for the Atari 800, the last was Battlefield 3. I was an avid supporter until they turned all greedy, I would have purchased many of their titles after BF3 if they were not such greedy devils.
When EA started it was focused on making the game developers ‘rock stars’ to attract and show appreciation for the good game developers. They lost that vision along the way to feeding their own selfishness.
they don’t make good games anymore anyway
They’ve never made good games. They sometimes allowed one of their devs to make a good game when they weren’t looking, but no one is perfect.
FIFA 99, Need for Speed : Underground, The Sims 2, C&C : Red Alert 2, SSX3, Black and White, LOTR 2 & 3, Burnout 3, Battlefield Vietnam, …
There was a time when they were good, but they fell out of grace in the second half of the 2000s
They had a reputation for buying better companies to own the IPs and gutting the teams before the late 2000s. It’s sort of cathartic seeing that happen to them now, but not really because all the shitheels who made those decisions will probably be getting a nice payout while the actually workers will just get kicked to the curb.
Eh some of their stuff from the 80s was pretty groovy.
Didn’t they make Archon?
Yeah Archon, the Might & Magic series, Road Rash etc.
No, they made some bangers before going evil.
They accidentally made a really good Star wars game several years ago, but when they noticed they abandoned it. All the reviews for it were basically along on the lines of, this is really good, but don’t expect any updates.
I gave up on EA a long time back, and them not making Alice: Asylum was the final nail in their coffin.
