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EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners

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Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners

#181

Post by tapoxi »

CaptainOfCoit wrote: post #144
tapoxi wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To their credit, the new Battlefield had an extremely well recieved beta and feedback from ongoing private tests is overwhelmingly positive. They're even shipping Godot based modding tools.

> To their credit How much of the new Battlefield actually been coming from EA though? I feels like the relatively new "Battlefield Lab" (which EA seems to have a really hands-off approach with so far) seems to be the main credit for that. Has there been any interviews or anything that clarifies how much EA been involved? Otherwise I'd continue give credit to the developers rather than the publisher.

Battlefield Studios is just a bunch of EA owned studios, DICE, Criterion, Ripple Effect (formerly EA LA). It's not a separate entity. EA corporate put Vince Zampella in charge of the whole thing.

Labs is the name of their playtest program.

Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners

#182

Post by stackskipton »

ecshafer wrote: post #135
byronic wrote: post #131

Not referencing the Saudi Arabia portion here specifically but LBOs as documented in the book Barbarians at the Gate (covers Nabisco/RJR tobacco) gives me basically zero hope for the future of EA. EA was already rabid cost-cutters and RIF specialists, and they won the most hated company award for however many consecutive years for a reason. Giving them crushing debt to go along with their propensity to give large exe…

EA won the most hated company award because video game players are dramatic. Charging $5 for a launch DLC is a drop in the bucket compared to the ways that some larger more critical companies can affect your life.

Sure, their “crimes” are minor compared to RealPage raising rents on everyone but it wasn’t because gamers were dramatic. It was most hated because it was so in your face.

Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners

#183

Post by boston_clone »

Nexxxeh wrote: post #80
swiftcoder wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel like the need for constant growth (instead of just sustainability) is what has caused much of the issues in the current gaming market. I'm not sure the investment group attempting to diversify Saudi oil income is going to be less profit oriented than the stock market in general

Muhammad Bonesaw grew up on Age of Empires, and enjoys(/enjoyed) CoD. They also want to use it to shape global perspective. I think signs are good, or at least less-bad.

Could you share why you feel the Saudis buying a huge company like EA to "shape global perspective" is a good sign?

Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners

#184

Post by csomar »

chuckadams wrote: post #65
thiago_fm wrote: post #36

They basically bought FIFA (now called FC). It's a very simple money-printing machine, with plenty of people addicted to it with its gambling/gache style game. All the other IP barely make any revenue and will likely get even less attention. RIP Bioware.

For a moment, I thought you were saying they bought FIFA itself. Which doesn't seem out of the question, FSM knows they're for sale in every other way.

Given that they are getting the 34 cup, then yes? They did buy fifa?

Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners

#185

Post by LunaSea »

ecshafer wrote: post #179
vunderba wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EA has been a target of scorn for a while because of a laundry list of issues (including pay-to-win schemes, loot boxes, treatment of employees, etc.) which is long enough to warrant its own dedicated wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Electronic_Arts

EA doing any amount of shenanigans isn't making people sick, killing people, making people homeless or destitute. Their crimes are minor and petty.

So I guess that no other matter can receive attention if some people are homeless in the world?

Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners

#186

Post by boston_clone »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #70
swiftcoder wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel like the need for constant growth (instead of just sustainability) is what has caused much of the issues in the current gaming market. I'm not sure the investment group attempting to diversify Saudi oil income is going to be less profit oriented than the stock market in general

> not sure the investment group attempting to diversify Saudi oil income is going to be less profit oriented than the stock market in general For what it’s worth, MBS is reportedly an avid gamer.

So is Elon Musk.

Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners

#188

Post by deanc »

ARandumGuy wrote: post #175
byronic wrote: post #131

Not referencing the Saudi Arabia portion here specifically but LBOs as documented in the book Barbarians at the Gate (covers Nabisco/RJR tobacco) gives me basically zero hope for the future of EA. EA was already rabid cost-cutters and RIF specialists, and they won the most hated company award for however many consecutive years for a reason. Giving them crushing debt to go along with their propensity to give large exe…

Are there any examples where a company was purchased via a leveraged buyout and the company went on to be more profitable afterwards? Because the only examples I know of resulted in the purchased company going bankrupt fairly quickly.

Many sports teams come to mind. Pretty much any F1 team that exists is now worth a lot more on paper than it was purchased for. A few EPL teams come to mind too.

Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners

#189

Post by mhh__ »

AlexandrB wrote: post #11

AAA gaming feels so tired (and tiresome) that this news barely registers for me. The last EA game I played was the excellent C&C remaster - and EA's main contribution was getting out of the way of the project. They still own the rights to a ton of legendary IP - SimCity, Command & Conquer, Battlefield, but I don't have illusions that new iterations of that IP will be any good. I know this is probably part of the Saud…

The new battlefield actually looks pretty good

Re: EA Announces Agreement to be Acquired by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners

#190

Post by rockercoaster »

nerdjon wrote: post #60
herpdyderp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BioWare is long dead anyway.

Honestly I disagree and I feel like this is largely parroted without playing the games. SWTOR was maintained pretty well for a while and was fun. The issues with ME3's ending were blown way out of proportion and was still a fantastic trilogy. Andromeda had its issues no doubt about it but I am still mad at a certain website deciding that they were going to just go hard on attacking it. It was a fun game, it had some…

> Andromeda had its issues no doubt about it but I am still mad at a certain website deciding that they were going to just go hard on attacking it. It was a fun game, it had some development issues and some nasty bugs at launch. But was still fun.

My wife and I have played through the trilogy twice together. I've played it solo separately once. We're talking about a third joint play through soon, I expect we'll start it before the end of the year.

We made it six or so hours into Andromeda and dropped it, with no desire to ever revisit. Characters, gameplay, and story, all three failed to appeal to us at all. Trying to get into it was a chore, and after three or four feature-films worth of time with zero fun experienced, we cut our losses.

(agreed about ME3's ending, but to be fair we didn't play that until they fixed it, the original presentation does seem really bad from what I've read about it)

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