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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

#381

Post by CaptainOfCoit »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #193

Videogamers have fickle tastes that can change on a whim, and the entire dev stack for game development is becoming more accessible and commoditized, creating massive amounts of competition. Even more so when it comes to squeezing beloved franchises out. Multiple franchises have died under EA (Sim City anyone?), and one of the top franchises EA owns basically has morphed into a "Middle East combat simulator" (Battlef…

> and one of the top franchises EA owns basically has morphed into a "Middle East combat simulator" (Battlefield).

Isn't the latest + previous installation about US VS either China and/or Russia, or some other amalgamation of those?

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

#382

Post by CaptainOfCoit »

port11 wrote: post #360
thiht wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's an easy boycott, EA has been pretty much irrelevant to the video games scene for the past few years anyway.

It is an undeniably strong influence in the video games scene, with increasing revenue each year apart from minor tumbles. I despise what it stands for, but EA being called irrelevant?

> with increasing revenue each year apart from minor tumbles

Very modest "increases" last ~3 years, and if I don't remember wrong, this year might be the first revenue didn't increase.

None the less, I agree they aren't irrelevant, and I also despise them.

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

#383

Post by hackernewds »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #342
paxys wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company you admire died a long time ago. Their focus today isn't on these historic franchises but releasing the same FIFA every year with new forms of microtransactions to hook a new generation of teenagers. And they have already laid off several thousand employees in the last 2-3 years.

This move will only lay off thousands more, sadly. Like the gaming industry needed even more veterans kicked out. It's definitely not good times at all, no matter how you feel about the companies. Three of the largest 3rd party western studios in the last 3 years are being bought out. This doesn't bode well no matter where you are or what you consume in the industry.

The nice part about this is when employees get laid off they distribute their talents to other companies. And now the barrier to entry to starting a small indie outfit is so much lower. They don't just simply disappear

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

#384

Post by dehrmann »

djhn wrote: post #358
dehrmann wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The debt buyers are the same people that created that debt (the people doing the LBO in the first place) Sometimes, but not always. I did a quick search on who it is for EA, but didn't find anything. > They force the company they just bought to pay them loan terms they set for the privilege of buying the company they just bought. If the buyers are also the lenders, yes. > That's why LBOs are pretty much a corporate…

The brand reputation gets milked while cost cutting measures result in subpar products and services. Growth targets are gone, now you optimise for cutting costs faster than you lose market share. It’s not a Ponzi scheme, it just feels like a scam when consumer brands cash out at your expense (the loyal consumer) and slowly bleed the company dry. You do have to note that this is not a universal feature of PE-backed bu…

Enshitification is common in public companies, too. It's more a feature of greedy, short-term owners.

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

#385

Post by throaway5445454 »

msl wrote: post #300
LunaSea wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not so, but if you're to pick one company over all the others as being the most deserving of your ire, EA seems like a rather strange choice compared to, say, Nestlé [1], Chiquita [2], The Coca-Cola Company [3] or Shell [4]. One might even wonder if there isn't something wrong with your priorities. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_of_Nestl%C3%A9 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiquita#Criticism [3]…

Well that's all well and good, but the ignorant masses who called EA the most evil company did so for basically the same reasons that you'd critique those other companies. Big corporations that put out productions designed to do nothing but take money from (often poor) people at the expense of their health.

To me, the constant criticism of gamers over the issue reads like shilling for that pathetic open letter EA put out in response. Classic deflection from a toxic entity.

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

#386

Post by watwut »

detaro wrote: post #242
rwmj wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was Twitter an LBO? I thought the funding came from Musk taking on the debt.

A big part of why Twitter needed to cut expenses drastically after the buyout was that it suddenly had an extra >1$ billion of yearly debt repayments to handle.

Did not helped they alienated paying customers (as in companies selling ads) at around the day 2 by literally ignoring them and not providing the service.

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

#387

Post by tanjtanjtanj »

deanc wrote: post #188
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.

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.

Those are just buyouts not leveraged buyouts.

No EPL team was purchased with an LBO as far as I know.

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

#388

Post by elephanlemon »

fidotron wrote: post #299
Aeolun wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is because the credit can never be with those that purely provide money and dictate terms. Nobody thinks the investors are what make the company. It’s the founders.

I spent time as a TD on both the dev and publishing sides - the perception all EA (the publisher) is doing is money and terms is very much mistaken. To take the case of Bioware, the SW:TOR launch was a notable disaster. There is no way in hell Bioware by themselves could have recovered from that, and it took a lot of "external" firefighting to get that under control. OTOH various decisions many people assume came fro…

If you had to guess, do you think that SWTOR would have released in the way it did had BioWare been an independent company? (Notably, incomplete and in many ways an uninteresting WoW clone.)

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

#389

Post by sylens »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #194
ecshafer wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

> Let's also not forget video games are discretionary spending, meaning they could charge $400 and it would still not be any more immoral than an expensive handbag. It would just mean that I'm not buying it, just like how I don't buy expensive handbags.

This is a problem in the video game community, where they feel that they have to buy new games, new hardware, etc. because their identity is built on being a "gamer" and they have to maintain that identity. That's why you see so much toxicity about cosmetics, microtransactions, raising prices, buggy games on launch - these people literally cannot help themselves from buying everything, so they feel like their only recourse is to complain (and in some cases, harass others) about it relentlessly.

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

#390

Post by Invictus0 »

stogot wrote: post #359
nashashmi wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gibson Greeting Cards (1982) by Wesray Capital, Bought for $80M (only $1M in equity), sold for $220M within 18 months Hilton Hotels (2007) by Blackstone Group, Despite the 2008 crisis, refinanced and sold with a $14B profit Safeway (1986) by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Restructured, sold underperforming stores, returned to profitability HCA Healthcare (2006) by KKR & Bain Capital, Strong cash flow supported debt; remain…

So 50/50 odds on completely destroying the company (and jobs) or generating some minor wealth for a handful of investors?

Try to think clearly for a second. Why would there be a trillion dollar PE ecosystem if this always completely destroyed the company?
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