# The EA leveraged buyout acquisition raises a few questions, in my opinion **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Tags:** trump\ **Created:** [September 30, 2025, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ea-leveraged-buyout-acquisition-raises-a-few-questions-in-my-opinion/1023532 "2025-09-30T16:56:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2025, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ea-leveraged-buyout-acquisition-raises-a-few-questions-in-my-opinion/1023532/1 "2025-09-30T16:56:36Z")
[Jared Kushner, Saudi Arabia Team Up To Buy Video Game Developer For $55 Billion | HuffPost Impact](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/electronic-arts-buyout-kushner-saudis_n_68daaccbe4b0a3d9991e62db?d_id=10655395&ncid_tag=fcbklnkushpmg00000013&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&utm_campaign=us_politics&fbclid=IwY2xjawNI6F5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHlvuu0PjtQhALFiw0GhWNqtM5hS9j_BwybgFHjEqgABht6EUN7lrnGzXP8F0_aem_ao9HOfPbNjsFXMlioEq01A) It is the largest leveraged buyout in history, Silver Lake Partners, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund PIF, and Affinity Partners will pay EA’s stockholders $210 per share (about 25% higher than the price before news of the acquisition). Affinity Partners is run by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The company was floundering recently so I am wondering what is really going on here. ---
**Author:** ![Palooka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/palooka/32/2902_2.png) [@Palooka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palooka)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2025, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ea-leveraged-buyout-acquisition-raises-a-few-questions-in-my-opinion/1023532/2 "2025-09-30T17:04:31Z")
Probably more sportswashing using the FIFA series. Saudi Arabia did a bunch of esports recently as well. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2025, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ea-leveraged-buyout-acquisition-raises-a-few-questions-in-my-opinion/1023532/3 "2025-09-30T17:14:26Z")
JFC, $210 a share! I sold a bunch of EA about ten years ago for around $67! That represented a tidy little profit but holy cow, if I had just held on! ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2025, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ea-leveraged-buyout-acquisition-raises-a-few-questions-in-my-opinion/1023532/4 "2025-09-30T17:20:12Z")
I smell a massive sell-off of assets in the near future, and if anybody has any EA games on Steam I think they should do their best to acquire full versions of those games. ---
**Author:** ![duality72](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duality72/32/3910_2.png) [@duality72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duality72)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2025, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ea-leveraged-buyout-acquisition-raises-a-few-questions-in-my-opinion/1023532/5 "2025-09-30T20:08:05Z")
That and more friendly content. > **[Ubisoft's Saudi-funded Assassin's Creed DLC provokes staff unrest, but the...](https://www.pcgamer.com/games/assassins-creed/ubisofts-saudi-funded-assassins-creed-dlc-provokes-staff-unrest-but-the-publisher-insists-partnering-with-the-controversial-regime-is-a-ok-talking-with-partners-who-do-not-share-our-democratic-values-does-not-mean-abandoning-them/)** > > The free DLC takes players to an historic part of Saudi Arabia. ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2025, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ea-leveraged-buyout-acquisition-raises-a-few-questions-in-my-opinion/1023532/6 "2025-09-30T20:43:29Z")
I’m concerned that the Mass Effect and The Sims series will become less inclusive. In Mass Effect, you can have homosexual romance, and you can even choose your own pronouns in the latest Sims games. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2025, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ea-leveraged-buyout-acquisition-raises-a-few-questions-in-my-opinion/1023532/7 "2025-10-01T06:47:54Z")
Honestly I’d be amazed if Mass Effect even continues to exist in a recognizable form. Private-equity acquisitions almost always lead to the stripping-out of unstable assets. EA will likely shrink to a roster of stable and reliable earners like sports titles, online shooters, and anything else that’s supported quarter-after-quarter by in-game purchases. BioWare has been a troubled studio for years and there’s a better-than-even chance that EA guts it or dumps it off entirely. Regarding the motivation for the buyout more generally, Saudi Arabia has spent the last few years using its wealth to buy influence in various institutions and cultural spheres that up to now have been resolutely Western. See also its golf tournaments, involvement in F1, and, most recently, the Riyadh comedy festival, whose announced headliners are being roasted by comics with a moral spine. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2025, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ea-leveraged-buyout-acquisition-raises-a-few-questions-in-my-opinion/1023532/8 "2025-10-01T07:06:31Z")
I am no fan of EA at all. As a PC gamer I view them as the Eye of Sauron looming over the PC gaming landscape. That said, I have never seen a leveraged buyout like this work out. The buyers are there to loot to company and sell the bones. They are never there to make a better product. As said above, I am no fan of EA. I fucking hate them and the damage they’ve done to PC gaming which I love. But, as much as I hate them, I think this is worse for us as consumers. What was bad likely just got awful. I will not buy a game from them for years till I see how this settles out. (because now you never own a game…you have a license to use it which can be removed at any time) ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2025, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ea-leveraged-buyout-acquisition-raises-a-few-questions-in-my-opinion/1023532/9 "2025-10-01T18:13:34Z")
Burn the big publishers down, I don’t care. It just gives breathing room to the smaller players that are the ones making games worth playing anyways. The thing about the game market is that the barriers to entry are pretty low, so the corporate behemoths like EA might be able to buy up the studios that made beloved games, rip their hearts out and shit all over the corpse by turning those IPs into dreck, but they can’t then use their market position to prevent the new kids on the block from releasing games that are actually worth playing. See, for example, Warhorse with Kingdom Come Delivery 2, or the Team Cherry with Silksong, or Sandfall with Clair Obscure: Expedition 33. Yeah, it sucks that Mass Effect 4 will probably never happen. But if EA is reduced to churning out FIFA and Madden 20xx using AI to do the coding, then the type of talent that produced the games of the past that we loved won’t be working for EA studios, they’ll be working for smaller studios producing entirely new properties. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2025, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ea-leveraged-buyout-acquisition-raises-a-few-questions-in-my-opinion/1023532/10 "2025-10-01T18:21:57Z")
Do you also want Steam to go away? These are the games EA has on Steam currently: [Steam Publisher: Electronic Arts](https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/EA/) It is a massive list, and if EA suddenly collapses Steam takes a massive hit that a lot of your small publishers will definitely feel because they tend to use Steam also. ---
**Author:** ![Palooka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/palooka/32/2902_2.png) [@Palooka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palooka)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2025, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ea-leveraged-buyout-acquisition-raises-a-few-questions-in-my-opinion/1023532/11 "2025-10-01T18:29:03Z")
EA only put their games back on Steam a few years ago. Steam was doing fine without them. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2025, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ea-leveraged-buyout-acquisition-raises-a-few-questions-in-my-opinion/1023532/12 "2025-10-01T18:30:51Z")
Why would Steam go away? Valve has boatloads of money and isn’t reliant on any one publisher, even one the size of EA. Plus EA won’t “suddenly collapse.” It might get broken up and sold off for parts, but there’ll still be some entity that owns the rights to any given title, and those titles will probably still be for sale on Steam. Pretty sure you can still buy the early access version Kerbal Space Program 2, for example, and its development was stopped by publisher Take-Two a couple years ago when they sold Private Division, and the IP has been sold twice since then. Steam might have finally put a stop to that, but the original KSP is still for sale and owned by the same private equity outfit that’s gnawing on the bones of Private Division. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2025, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ea-leveraged-buyout-acquisition-raises-a-few-questions-in-my-opinion/1023532/13 "2025-10-01T19:34:32Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Do you also want Steam to go away? These are the games EA has on Steam currently: [Steam Publisher: Electronic Arts](https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/EA/) It is a massive list, and if EA suddenly collapses Steam takes a massive hit that a lot of your small publishers will definitely feel because they tend to use Steam also. That’s a great list of “Historically important video games,” but I’m not sure it tells us much about the financial importance of EA to the viability of Steam as a market. I do not think, for example, that Steam is getting a whole lot of revenue from 1989’s _Populous_, or 1999’s _Dungeon Keeper 2_. Probably more instructive to look at [Steam’s top sellers](https://steamdb.info/stats/globaltopsellers/). Out of the top 10, two games are by EA (Battlefield 6 and Football Club 2025), which is pretty good, but hardly vital to Valve’s viability, and if you look past that to the top 50, there’s not much more there: _Apex Legends_ is #40, _It Takes Two_ is 48, and the friend pass for ITT is 46, and that’s about it. Anyway, even if EA did suddenly “collapse,” very few of those games would be lost as a result. IP companies don’t bury their IPs when they go under - they sell them off, usually at fire sale prices. EA’s big money makers, like _Madden_ or _Battlefield_, would get snapped up almost instantly - users would probably not even see an interruption in online services or title availability. And a lot of their smaller, older IPs would potentially go to smaller studios who might actually want to make new games in the franchise. EA isn’t making any more _Dead Space_ games, despite the franchise being profitable, because it’s not profitable _enough_ compared to their major cash cows. But there’s lots of smaller publishers who would be thrilled to have an IP that made _Dead Space_’s numbers. Heck, that’s Nightdive Studio’s entire business model. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2025, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ea-leveraged-buyout-acquisition-raises-a-few-questions-in-my-opinion/1023532/14 "2025-10-01T21:25:56Z")
> [@ekedolphin](#): > > In Mass Effect, you can have homosexual romance, and you can even choose your own pronouns in the latest Sims games. There was never going to be a Mass Effect 4, not after Andromeda and Veilguard both flopped. The thing has been vaporware for five years. Not to mention Anthem and the cancellation of Shadow Realms. Bioware has been effectively dead for over a decade. I hope EA gets broken up for parts when this buyout falls. Or let the Saudis keep pouring money down a hole. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2025, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ea-leveraged-buyout-acquisition-raises-a-few-questions-in-my-opinion/1023532/15 "2025-10-01T22:55:38Z")
Steam is a storefront. EA imploding and not producing new titles isn’t going to make Steam disappear, and it isn’t going to lead to smaller developers and publishers either a) deciding to stop making new games or b) not to use Steam to sell their games anymore. Steam just takes a 30% cut from the sales of all games on their storefront and succeeds because the volume of sales companies gets by selling their games via Steam greatly outweighs that 30% cut that they give to Steam. EA can honestly die for all I care. They have a well-deserved bad reputation. They produce slop, like the aforementioned FIFA and Madden 20xx which are essentially the same game every year. Most of those “Historically important video games” on the list weren’t even made by EA, EA just bought the IP. And as to any potential loss of inclusivity in the Sims, I might be bothered to care if the whole thing hadn’t long since devolved into the most predatory DLC slop farm imaginable. Go over to your Steam account, get the base Sims4 for free, click ‘show all DLC’ and click on ‘add all DLC to your cart’ if you dare. It’s $944 even with the Steam Autumn sale going on. ---
**Author:** ![Dark\_Sponge](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dark_sponge/32/121_2.png) [@Dark\_Sponge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dark_Sponge)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2025, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ea-leveraged-buyout-acquisition-raises-a-few-questions-in-my-opinion/1023532/16 "2025-10-02T14:39:19Z")
EA has ruined a bunch of IPs. I’m happy to see them go away, but hopefully another company will buy the rights to continue making the titles they’ve mangled. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2025, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ea-leveraged-buyout-acquisition-raises-a-few-questions-in-my-opinion/1023532/17 "2025-10-02T17:18:12Z")
> [@asterion](#): > > There was never going to be a Mass Effect 4, There’s a Mass Effect TV series in preproduction at Amazon. If it gets made, and if it’s a hit, there may be a future for the gaming franchise, but that’s years down the line. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2025, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ea-leveraged-buyout-acquisition-raises-a-few-questions-in-my-opinion/1023532/18 "2025-10-06T14:04:24Z")
I like the Jedi Survivor games published by EA. Like many people, I’m not a fan of EA, as they have a long history of anti-consumer behavior and a habit of gobbling up studios and destroying them. I don’t think I’ll be buying any games from them in the future. I hope the Saudi investors lose their thawbs on EA.