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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

#201

Post by mnky9800n »

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

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

#202

Post by arcatech »

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]

You are simplifying the arguments.

In general, if you find yourself thinking a group of people are "just being dramatic" then you're probably missing context.

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

#203

Post by keyringlight »

nerdjon wrote: post #106
keyringlight wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say Bioware has been through a rough time for over a decade, between pulling in new directions to avoid being just a factory that spits out sequels and being pushed into whatever area the business/owner side wanted, but after clearing their plate by shipping and drawing a line under Dragon Age I think they need to prove themselves. Apparently they're working as support for other studios while they do pre-producti…

Looking at Bioware's history they are also an interesting company. It does seem like they tried to avoid just becoming the "Mass Effect and Dragon Age" developer but that did not really work that well for them. Maybe that turned out to be a distraction. I think it also did not help that everything they put out was compared to both of those and seemed to have an expectation that it had to be as big or was a failure. I…

Regarding ME4 (or is it 5?) the weasel word I keep coming back to is 'potential', it could be great, but whether they can accomplish that is something we can't say on the outside.

It relates to one of my bugbears about how a subsection of gamers have grown to dislike the big productions often for some valid reasons, there's a lot of potential pitfalls in making a game like ME, but a company like EA is the only place that big impressive experience can be done. Right from the earliest previews introducing ME1 they were going into the cinematic style of it and how good it looked, which was an evolution of what they'd done before with Jade Empire/KOTOR (and still seems to be there with parts of DA:Veilguard). While there's (again, potential) competition in the coming years from Exodus by Archetype, and Owlcat's The Expanse: Osiris reborn games, it's hard to see them providing quite what could be done at the largest games companies.

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

#204

Post by choilive »

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.

Dell did pretty well after going private

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

#205

Post by jcranmer »

khuey wrote: post #124
no_wizard wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RIP Mass Effect and by extension BioWare. One of the most groundbreaking trilogies in gaming with tons of potential and it’ll get relegated to the dustbin of history no doubt. If I was absurdly rich I’d buy up lots of underused and/or abused IP and start a game studio around it. I feel like that would be a good business if you have the capital to handle game dev costs

I assume the acquisition is mostly about the sports games and Battlefield but EA really is sitting on some fantastic IP: Bioware, Westwood, and Maxis were all great studios.

I think "were" is the correct tense. EA's dictates for SimCity (2013) ended up crashing that franchise entirely, and a decade into The Sims 4, EA has admitted it's planning on endless expansion packs for Sims 4 rather than making a Sims 5, with the community largely debating whether or not the best Sims game is Sims 2 or Sims 3.

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

#206

Post by npodbielski »

Culonavirus wrote: post #200

Finally the beginning of the end of EA. The greedy bastards ruined so many franchises and chased so many fads that their absence will be a net positive. I do feel bad for the devs working there... but them having to find new jobs is genuinely the only negative aspect in all of this. I have very little respect for any company that is only interested in the next couple of financial quarters and in making their sharehol…

Give this men a drink!

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

#207

Post by vkou »

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…

Does EA 202X stomp their workforce? I had a vague idea that this was largely a thing of the past.

The wiki article linked cites a lot of abuse, but all of it is nearly 2 decades old. My understanding was that it course corrected, and is one of the better gaming firms to work for ATM.

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

#208

Post by bigstrat2003 »

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…

> The issues with ME3's ending were blown way out of proportion and was still a fantastic trilogy.

I did play the game and no they weren't. The issues truly started with ME2, but ME3 was an awful game that was an embarrassment to the standard of quality set by ME1. Dragon Age also went downhill starting with DA2 (which again I did play at least some of it though I didn't bother finishing because I hated it).

You're obviously still enjoying their work and that's cool. I'm genuinely glad you still do. But don't act like everyone is just being haters who don't play the games and parrot things that other people say. I did play Bioware's games, and that's why I no longer play them and consider them to be long since dead.

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

#209

Post by evanmoran »

wil421 wrote: post #102
herpdyderp wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The controls and movement in the first one were terrible.

The remaster improved the first ones controls I believe!

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

#210

Post by triceratops »

kakacik wrote: post #199
triceratops wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has liberalised, socially I think that's what they meant by "moved westernly".

Sure, 2 inches per year, 2 steps ahead 1 step back in a good year. In 2000 years they may approach current levels of personal or religious freedom that average western country has. Till then, its absolutely horrible place if you are in any sort of minority group, or woman, or want that pesky freedom for you or your children.

Criticism and insults from people like you is exactly what they need to go faster. /s
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