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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

#401
post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What pressures are there on PE firms do things with more long term "good for the USA" type of thinking?

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

#402
I'm not sure how to feel about this. EA has already been pretty terrible for years; pushing their origin storefront, pushing microtransaction hell in games, lazy [sport franchise] [current year] releases, etc. I think the last good year for EA was probably in the 2000s. Usually these sorts of acquisitions make the product worse, and EA might get "worse" in some strict sense, but there's not much to lose.

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

#404
post #29

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…

I mostly agree about AAA, but to be fair Battlefield 1 was/is a really good game. You'll never find an experience like that in an indie studio.

As much as I love bf4, I will say bf1 really hit it out of the park. It was a fantastic game that ran well at launch and basically only got better with the dlcs. It's servers also seem to be immune to a ddos that regularly kill bf4 servers.

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

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The PE firms strip the assets, aka have them take on huge amounts of debt, sell assets, and then pay them dividends etc. before they collapse.

Why would banks keep giving PE firms loans for these kinds of deals if the companies inevitably collapse and default on those loans?

Not trying to defend PE here, but this narrative doesn't make sense to me.

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

#406
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that Battlefield 4 was the last good Battlefield game. Biggest asset was fully self-hostable servers that provided progression, community control, and allowed gaming clans/organizations to actually community-build. Nowadays, forced matchmaking and limited party sizes really eliminate the ability to build large communities. The consolidation of publishers/developers in controlling all of the online experienc…

BF4 was broken on launch, with servers crashing from people simply playing the objective. These studios have been serving people garbage for close to two decades by now. They deserve their fate.

BF4 was a massive redemption story. It started rough, yes, but it went on to become probably the best sandbox shooter ever released. Sorry if you didn't have the patience to make it through the initial 6 months. You missed out.

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

#407
post #79

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…

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.

I'm sure the game will be well received, but the beta was enough to put me off from buying it, and you're talking to someone who bought bf5 and 2042 despite misgivings, so I have a pretty low bar.

The maps I've played are pretty much all close quarters maps with the exception of liberation peak. It's pretty clear they're courting the COD playerbase. The maps that do have vehicles are so small it makes no sense to have anything but humvees. They've once again given assault pretty much everything it needs to be a god class. No thanks. Not my battlefield, and I say this as someone who's got like 4k hours in bf3/4.

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

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony really kicks in when you start to remember all the arguments for how capitalism leads to the best products. Seems we forgot to clarify "best for who ?", but it's clear at least shareholders won something .

Indie games are a product of capitalism too. RimWorld, Stardew Valley, Minecraft, etc. All products a functioning market just as much as the latest AAA shovelware is. It's thanks to capitalism that you get to choose which one you want to play.

Eh, I think we'd probably have a lot more indie games if we did not live in a society with few safety nets where one really needs a good paying job to survive.

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

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The PE firms strip the assets, aka have them take on huge amounts of debt, sell assets, and then pay them dividends etc. before they collapse.

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