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The sale of Electronic Arts has been finalized

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Re: The sale of Electronic Arts has been finalized

#61

Post by Yizahi »

snowram wrote: post #41
tomkarho wrote: post #7

End of an era. Who do we vote as the worst company ever now?

EA being voted as the worst company has always been funny to me. The world would be a far better place if it was indeed the case.

It's actually extremely logical if we will step away for a minute from the maximalist black and white, all or nothing worldview. Of course there worse entities out there. This doesn't mean that it is bad/pointless/ineffective to pick a battle with a smaller evil. In fact, it is better to pick a smaller evil.

Can you boycott Palantir? Well, no. Not really. No regular citizen can (to any definition of getting a result). It's like 100% ineffective. But boycotting a much small, consumer facing shitcorp in a highly competitive market is in fact effective and can often work. The efficiency is somewhere between 1% to 99%, which in all scenarios objectively better than 0%.

Same with boycotting some Chinese brands for example. Sure, the defeatist argument goes that because most everything is made there we can't really boycott those wares. But who exactly set these "fair play" rules and do humans need to one-sidedly abide by them when facing corporate abuse? I can buy Chinese something and at the same time boycott Chinese something else and it is fine. I literally don't care if some megacorp would consider that "unfair" or "hypocrisy". And neither should any individual human be concerned about corporation's opinions, ever.

Re: The sale of Electronic Arts has been finalized

#62

Post by Yizahi »

nick486 wrote: post #8
bestouff wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a financial investment. They're buying influence.

>They're buying influence. Buying EA for influence? With the reputation EA has in gaming? They're a joke - they're not influencing anything. Its like buying a violin to fix a flat tire.

Buying only a 40% stake in Epic, allowed China to successfully breach Apple's store monopoly and establish a foothold on a previously restricted platform. Will the gable pay off in the future or not, is not exactly relevant. The point is that they can leverage pre-existing western companies for their expansion plans in various ways.

Re: The sale of Electronic Arts has been finalized

#63

Post by techjamie »

Yizahi wrote: post #61
snowram wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EA being voted as the worst company has always been funny to me. The world would be a far better place if it was indeed the case.

It's actually extremely logical if we will step away for a minute from the maximalist black and white, all or nothing worldview. Of course there worse entities out there. This doesn't mean that it is bad/pointless/ineffective to pick a battle with a smaller evil. In fact, it is better to pick a smaller evil. Can you boycott Palantir? Well, no. Not really. No regular citizen can (to any definition of getting a result)…

I would say in EA's case, boycotting them did have some level of effectiveness. They didn't stop being shitty altogether, but they did come out with a couple strong singleplayer experiences that doesn't overwhelmingly stink of overt monetization, and it seemed like they put at least some attempt into turning their reputation around (though they still put out plenty of monetization slop, particularly their sports games)

But they messed around for too long, and I don't foresee their reputation ever seriously recovering. Especially now that they have a 55B investment/purchase to make up for now, they'll probably be even more egregious.

Re: The sale of Electronic Arts has been finalized

#64

Post by danbolt »

Morromist wrote: post #50
Jach wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

News to me about FIFA. SA has been trying to gain "influence" in sports overall, and their video game endeavors also seem focused on "e-sports" more than gaming as a whole. I frequently hear complaints about them in fighting game circles, which is a more niche segment of "e-sports". EA is a big step up even if it's not DOTA/LoL levels.

Yeah. Actually it looks to me like FIFA jumped the gun a bit. They stopped letting EA making their games in 2023, but then choaked and have only released two not-great looking games seemingly meant for low end systems like phones and the Nintendo Switch. I doubt either sold as well as the EA FIFA games. I'll bet they lost a lot of money - I'm sure there's an interesting story about FIFA's efforts to get their own gam…

It’s also worth noting that the EA studio that makes FIFA has been continuously doing so for over twenty years. It’s not being handed off between studios and rebuild operational expertise over and over.

If anything, FIFA was probably getting an incredible deal from EA given the cost of making AAA games today.

Re: The sale of Electronic Arts has been finalized

#65

Post by eudamoniac »

whatever1 wrote: post #36
hgomersall wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? This is JP Morgan on the hook for it if the loan goes bad.

No the taxpayer is. We paid the subprime mortgage bill. We will pay the private equity leverage bill too.

First of all the banks paid back that loan with interest. Second of all this EA loan is like pennies compared to that. JPM can swallow it easily.

Re: The sale of Electronic Arts has been finalized

#66

Post by vunderba »

d3Xt3r wrote: post #38
vunderba wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well at least as far as gaming companies go, Blizzard always seems willing to throw its hat in the ring.

In spite of all the hate, I like that Blizzard's games don't use super nasty DRMs (like Denuvo, which EA, Ubisoft and many others use), all their games work perfectly under Linux (Wine/Proton), and they still host live download links to a game that's nearly three decades old (Diablo 2). Like literally yesterday I set up a new Linux laptop and was about to install Project Diablo 2 under Steam, and was pleasantly surpr…

Yeah, Ubisoft... one of the most depressing game-related events for me was when they took over one of my all-time favorite franchises, the Heroes of Might and Magic series, when 3DO sadly went bankrupt.

Re: The sale of Electronic Arts has been finalized

#70

Post by LarsDu88 »

sph wrote: post #47
LarsDu88 wrote: post #12

Does this mean we'll finally get a new Sim City?

Are you that eager to give your money to the Saudis and Kushner? There’s a whole world of gaming out there.

Only if I can build a giant ass linear city in the middle of the fucking desert with a big ass maglev in the middle in Sim City 4000
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