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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

#211

Post by erulabs »

falcor84 wrote: post #93
Nexxxeh wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Interesting - how do you imagine that he would use the likes of CoD to shape global perspective?

From a gamers perspective, anything trying to actually convey a message would be a win against grey-goop slop franchise titles that play it so safe they can barely convey more than “you hero. Kill bad guy”.

That the message is going to be “Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are tier-1 allies / partners / powers” depends on your perspective. Lots of gamers outside the US these days!

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

#212

Post by jcranmer »

throwup238 wrote: post #117
falcor84 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting - how do you imagine that he would use the likes of CoD to shape global perspective?

By making sure that Saudi Arabia is portrayed as an ally in the game’s canon rather than generic MENA terrorists. It sounds silly at first but the US military has been doing something similar for ages with Hollywood, at least since WWII. The difference is the armed forces use access to military equipment for filming as the carrot rather than financing the productions directly.

The US Army has literally put out a video game as a recruiting tool: America's Army.

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

#213

Post by hs86 »

marcellus23 wrote: post #84
herpdyderp wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mass Effect 2 was a massive spit in the face of everything Mass Effect 1 was.

You're right. The sense of wonder and exploration I got playing ME1 was just totally absent in ME2. But it was nonetheless a pretty good game in its own right, and for many people, a game they enjoyed more than the original.

I loved ME1 and was disappointed by ME2 because I loved ME1 so much. I devoured the lore, every codex entry, and even the long elevator rides where you had to listen to news reports about your earlier actions. The world-building was so much better, and all of this was reduced to a minimum in ME2. ME1 was an epic space RPG with action elements, while ME2 was an action game built around a collection of crew side stories with lighter RPG elements.

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

#214

Post by bigstrat2003 »

Thaxll wrote: post #42
devjab wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bioware died back in 2007. As I see it this can only be an improvement.

Mass effect 2, one of the best Bioware game was developed under EA.

ME2 was not particularly good. The characters were good, but the gameplay was severely dumbed down and the main story was flat out bad. I don't know who at Bioware thought it was a good idea to force the player to work for Cerberus (basically space Nazis, for anyone who hasn't played Mass Effect), but it wasn't a good idea. You can't just railroad the player into working for bad guys in a game that is supposed to celebrate player choice. Not only that but they mishandled the villains, and the entire Collector plot was a waste of time that didn't contribute to the overall story. ME2 was the beginning of the decline in Bioware's quality and it never stopped after.

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

#215

Post by mrcwinn »

mnky9800n wrote: post #201
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…

Did you see the HBO movie version of Barbarians at the Gate? I thought it was pretty interesting. You can watch it all on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS4ENJCIYNM

This is a fantastic movie that was lost to time!

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

#216

Post by jofla_net »

jader201 wrote: post #139
bunderbunder wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently watched a youtube video by a gamer about 20 years younger than me who had discovered older games and was reflecting on how deeply different they feel compared to modern games. The big difference she observed is that older games don't hold your hand the way modern games do. They expect you to think hard, work hard, use trial and error, and generally, in her words, "use your brain." She spent a while talking…

> the reason modern AAA games hold your hand is because they have to. This doesn’t touch on one key difference between games now vs. games then: there were some secrets in games that you just didn’t ever know about unless there was a (printed) walkthrough, or through the word of mouth of friends. The Legend of Zelda is a great example. Nowadays, many games can be 100%’ed without even having to jump online or ask some…

> The Legend of Zelda is a great example.

Shoutout for the Chris Houlihan room.

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

#217

Post by balderdash »

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.

leverage increases the disparity of returns (so some companies are definitely out of business because the of the leverage put on them) but by far the vast majority of LBO’s are at least moderately successful.

This give you some idea of the volume https://www.ropesgray.com/en/insights/alerts/2025/07/us-pe-m...

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

#218

Post by ummonk »

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.

Addictive gambling for kids is hardly minor and petty. Many children have spent thousands on EA Sports games.

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

#219

Post by ReptileMan »

choilive wrote: post #204
ARandumGuy wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dell did pretty well after going private

But its buyout was lead by Michael Dell.

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

#220

Post by bigstrat2003 »

herpdyderp wrote: post #52
Thaxll wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mass effect 2, one of the best Bioware game was developed under EA.

Mass Effect 2 was a massive spit in the face of everything Mass Effect 1 was.

To this day, I would love to have a trilogy of games that were like the first one. Alas that Bioware basically immediately abandoned the direction of the first game for a much worse one in a misguided attempt to try to appeal to the mass market.
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