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EA Is Now Officially Privately Owned (gamedeveloper.com) 49

Posted by BeauHD from the done-deal dept.
Longtime Slashdot reader neoRUR shares a report from Game Developer: EA Sports FC and Battlefield publisher EA has been taken private by an investor consortium led by Saudi Arabia's sovereign Public Investment Fund (PIF). The move means the U.S. juggernaut is no longer a publicly-traded entity and is now majority owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through its PIF investment arm. Other investors include Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, the latter of which was established by U.S. president Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

The $55 billion transaction was financed via a combination of cash from PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners as well as roll-over of PIF's existing stake in EA -- constituting an equity investment of approximately $36 billion. Notably, $20 billion of debt financing was provided by JPMorgan Chase Bank. The deal cleared the necessary regulatory hurdles in July, paving the way for its completion at the close of trading on August 4, 2026. It was approved by regulators in major markets such as the European Union and the United States without incident, despite lawmakers and union leaders in the U.S. calling on the Federal Trade Commission to heavily scrutinize the leveraged buyout over geopolitical and employment concerns.

EA Is Now Officially Privately Owned More | Reply

EA Is Now Officially Privately Owned

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  • Great (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bahbus ( 1180627 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @07:04PM (#66273174) Homepage

    Another, and even better, reason to never touch anything produced or published by EA ever again. Fuck the Saudis.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
      If your hobby is sports and sports video games then I don't know what to tell you. I feel really bad for those folks. If that's what takes the edge off from your daily life it's about to get a lot shittier and it was already pretty shitty.
      • EA Sports Big was their golden era. I'm happy to just keep playing those games.
      • Really, why is my day about to get "even shitter"?
        • Well assuming you're not just trolling which is assuming a lot then EA is going to take features out of the games you enjoy and then sell them back to you at a premium. The entire design of the games you enjoy will be radically altered to try and push your buttons so that you will part with more money. So even if you have limitless cash because you're Elon Musk (and I could see him wasting his time trolling slashdot after all he's never invented anything so he's got nothing but time) the basic design of the
          • You may not have been paying attention, but this is how EA games have been for about 15 years now. Nothing is going to change. No amount of predatory monetisation can scare of those millions of players who are fine with the way EA games are today.

    • Re:Great (Score:5, Funny)

      by Mal-2 ( 675116 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @07:56PM (#66273254) Homepage Journal

      Yeah, I was thinking "We can stick it to KSA and Jared Kushner at the same time, just by not buying EA games? Where do I sign up?"

      • Exactly this, if the adults in the room (world leaders) refuse to do anything about these POS, the least we can do is screw these guys financially.

    • Re:Great (Score:4, Funny)

      by karmawarrior ( 311177 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @11:35PM (#66273388) Journal

      Does this mean I can't use Deluxe Paint III on my Amiga any more? *sighs* OK then!

      • I have such fond memories of EA from the '80s, but as far as I'm concerned, that's a completely different and unrelated entity.

        • I use so little EA stuff these days Deluxe Paint is literally the first thing I think of when I hear the name!

          I guess it's like hearing "HP printer" and thinking of those awesome postscript-running built-like-tanks laser printers nobody could afford in the 1980s/90s rather than $100 ink.

          How the mighty have fallen *sighs*

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ffkom ( 3519199 )
          Yes, games like "Archon" were legendary. But EA has not produced anything worth my time or money for at least 2 decades. I hope they relocate the EA headquarter to Rhiyad, including the current management, then find something "haram" in their office, and apply the strictest of Sharia-suggested beatings on them.
          • EA was a talented and well- liked organization before they went corporate. But they lost me when they released "Plants vs. Zombies 2" as an IOS exclusive. I had a bit of hope when the Android version came out, but to this day it has still not been ported to PC. Not cool, man.

  • "EA Ruins Things"... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Moryath ( 553296 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @07:11PM (#66273180)
    Now complete with garbage misogyny, antisemitic genocidal nutbaggery, and the rest of the horrible baggage of the Saudi Terrorist Crime Family.

  • Wow (Score:3)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @07:12PM (#66273184)

    I didn't think EA could get any worse.

  • The Company I work for is owed by Private equity.. I feel bad for the employees, big cuts are coming.

  • EA is a Dead Man walking (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @07:37PM (#66273228)
    They don't 20 billion dollars of leveraged buyout debt on them. If you think EA sucks now you haven't seen anything yet. They have to get out from under that debt and the only way they can think of to do that is to abuse their employees and their customers. They are already abusing the employees pretty much as much as a legally can.

    I expect they will start outsourcing things to foreign countries with cheap labor that they frankly can't really do because it's going to create weird cultural problems to do so. On top of that they have already started trying to add even nastier microtransactions in. And this is EA we are talking about.

    I feel bad for anyone who's into their sports games because they're going to basically collapse but because of monopolies you're still going to be stuck with them. So if that was your hobby then it's basically going to go to shit and there's nothing you can do about it.

    Once again this is one of those cases where antitrust law enforcement would have protected your hobby. People sometimes complain because I'm bringing politics into a hobbyist discussion but whether you like it or not politics is going to intrude on your life you don't get to stick your head in the sand anymore...

    • Once again this is one of those cases where antitrust law enforcement would have protected your hobby.

      Antitrust?

      Is EA a monopoly?

      Is changing owners really that nefarious?

      Seems like a real over-reaction, what pretext is there for the DOJ to try and block a private sale of EA to a consortium that includes an investor (Saudi Sovereign fund) that had $20BN invested?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jythie ( 914043 )

        Changing owners is neither here nor there... but the leveraged buyout is pretty nefarious and will likely kill the company.

      • Antitrust?
        Is EA a monopoly?

        Where did you get the ludicrously inaccurate and ignorant and therefore on-brand idea that antitrust only applies to monopolies?

      • Antitrust doesn't just ask is this a monopoly it also asks will this substantially reduce competition or negatively impact consumers.

        You don't have to be a monopoly to run afoul of antitrust law properly enforced. Just like how you don't have to murder somebody before you can be brought up on charges for conspiracy.
        • Can that even be applied in this case? I mean... it's videogames. Nobody *has* to buy videogames. And except for consoles, the barrier to market entry is almost literally zero. I'm not sure it's even possible to have a monopoly in that industry.

          I'd assume that in any antitrust case, they'd ask if the market power of the company is even relevant for the public at large, which for a videogame publisher I'd tend to always say no. It's a different thing for a company owning major hardware or distribution infras

    • I expect they will start outsourcing things to foreign countries with cheap labor that they frankly can't really do because it's going to create weird cultural problems to do so. On top of that they have already started trying to add even nastier microtransactions in.

      You forgot to mention that over the top of the already steaming POS games they'll add a nice cover of AI slop.
      And yet another round of mass layoffs.

  • Other investors include Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, the latter of which was established by U.S. president Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

    So now the whole company and any of its franchises are permanently tainted.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

      So now the whole company and any of its franchises are permanently tainted.

      Now? EA could already lick my taint.

  • A hacker already stole my main EA account, and they don't seem to be bothered about fixing it, so... (Goodbye SWGOH.)

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    that was electronic arts

  • A private company is like a girl with a wish, trying to accomplish it on it's own
    A public company is a girl that fell for the talk of kyubey and will sooner or later turn into a witch, and whatever EA is, is not back to a girl, but a demon

  • Maybe now that they can be staffed by slave labour working under the threat of death they'll do more than shit out shitty reskins* of the same game.

    What's the * for? Well the times they forgot to update textures and literally showed the logo from the previous year's release in the current release.

    Fuck EA. They get what they deserve, couldn't have happened to a nicer company.

  • Head of FIFA on the payola to sell part of FIAFA to private investors. Got shot down !
  • EA is not exactly the darling of computer game companies.

    • If they crash and burn hard enough perhaps they'll sell the sports titles to more reputable company.

  • Later, EA. Can't say it's been nice knowing you.

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