EA Sold

EA is a name that strikes fear into the wallet of gamers everywhere. I still remember all those years ago when they were voted the, I think it was the most hated company in America or it might have just been point blank worst company in America. Which there are no saints over there at the EA office. But I definitely think there are worse companies. But it just goes to show you the pure disdain people have for EA

and their practices. They have not been well liked for a very long time but you know who does like them? The Saudi Arabian government. They like them so much that they are buying EA for 55 billion dollars. Now it's not just the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund that's buying them all on their own outright they've actually got a whole Royal Rumble going habsies with them so they've got fucking superstars like Silverlake and Jared

Kushner's affinity partners doing this deal with them. So they've got like the superstars of slime here that are forking up 55 billion clams to own EA. EA was a publicly traded company, but obviously with this will no longer be. They're taking it private. Now there is one other name here

that's very important to this deal, JP Morgan. Because you see, Dhar Mann fam, $20 billion of debt is being committed by JP Morgan for this deal, $18 billion of which is expected to be funded at close. Now what does this mean for you, someone who might just be excited for Battlefield coming out?

Well, $20 billion is a big number. If you converted that to pounds, it's nearly as heavy as your mother, bitch. Point is, 20 billion dollars is what EA is now responsible to pay back. It's debt. And what are the ways that you can look to try and squeeze some more juice from the lemons here? More microtransactions. Something EA is very famous for. Another strategy EA might employ is layoffs. Again, something they're not a stranger to. And I predict, as well as I've seen other people also make this prediction,

you know I'm not fucking Bob Ivango over here with some kind of galaxy brain speculative theory, I would imagine they're going to start closing studios like Bioware. I think Bioware is going to be their big one. Their games have not been performing well financially for EA for a while. Anthem, into Dragon Age, the Veilguard, they're not crushing it in their sales numbers and they're a very expensive component of EA. Maybe not like the grand scheme of like billions of

dollars but that still is a sizable chunk of change and I think they're going to be checking under every single cushion on the sofa looking for any way of finding more money to pay back this debt. I would imagine there's going to be even more excessive microtransactions just desperately trying to claw into your wallet to get you to spend money in their games and I think there's going to be layoffs and studio closures. Again, EA is very famous for gutting studios. So I think that now with this 20 billion debt on the

plate, they're going to be even more aggressive. That's what I expect and I've seen a lot of other people also have that same idea in their head. It just feels like that's probably the direction EA will go. And I also saw it being reported by a lot of outlets that apparently the new EA owners are hopeful that AI will be their saving grace here for cutting cost and boosting profits. Which, again, AI, the entire purpose right now is just for the sake of saving money on the bottom line by replacing workers so you don't have to pay a salary to people, you can just have AI spit shit

out according to a report that is paywalled, so again I'm getting this secondhand from all the other reports reporting on that one, but apparently it was stated that AI would be used to boost EA's profits in the coming years and to manage a large debt load on a company that historically carried limited net debt. Now I've yapped about this strategy endlessly and it's clearly not exclusive to EA. Every company on the planet right now is scrambling to try and get the fucking AI in a titty twister so they can utilize it to save money. And there's going to be plenty of other gaming companies that will follow suit.

Even with EA, even if EA wasn't being purchased for $55 billion with $20 billion in debt, they would still 100% be trying to use AI to save money. I'm sure it's already happening across the entire industry right now. In fact, I've got a little tinfoil hat conspiracy theory that Ubisoft's CEO is actually just AI. I don't think there's a single human being left in that food chain there at the upper echelon because there is no way a sentient, living, breathing organism could have come up with ideas as stupid as Ubisoft has.

But in this case, again, it's not exclusive to EA. They're just being a little more open about it, I guess, about how they're going to utilize AI to cut these costs. Now let's talk about the new owners of EA. One of them being the Saudi Arabian government. Now if you have been paying attention to the state of tech or even the state of sports or esports, you probably know the Saudi Arabian government's been getting its fingers in a lot of different pies here. They've been exploring tons and tons of different companies and brands to own and it's been going on for a few years now, a handful of years now, and I don't

think it's gonna slow down or stop anytime soon. In fact quite the opposite. I'm confident Saudi Arabian government will continue to snatch up tons of major brands and companies across the globe and if you you don't mind, I'd like to go on a bit of a side tangent here. I'd like to blabber a bit. Esports. Many of you know I've been in the esports space for five years now. Started with Moist Esports, now Shopify Rebellion. So as an owner of an esports team I can tell you firsthand, Saudi Arabian government wants to

basically own the entire fucking industry there And they're already getting very close with things like the eSports World Cup most recently Evo where they now They're the majority owner of Evo. They have infinite money So in a scene like eSports which money is a myth there is as I've said numerous times There's no money to be made in eSports. It just an absolute, endless pit of agony when it comes to financials. Me, it's fine bleeding money there because I'm doing it under the idea that I'm going to lose this money, but I'm investing in it because what I get out of it is fun.

I love the spirit of competition. I love esports. It's why I had Moist eSports and it's why I now have Shopify Rebellion so I could expand the eSports space and have more things to watch and support more players. I love it. But any business that wants to get into eSports hates it because you just lose money. And the Saudi Arabian government obviously noticed that so what they did

is they put the chemical X into this into the sector money. They've given tons and tons of teams tons and tons of money to support things like the EWC and to own things in the eSports space because well without them they're not making money so they feel they absolutely have to play ball. I, of course, have seen this first-hand, but have declined all of that mumbo-jumbo. I haven't been shy about it. I've told you straight up numerous times, I don't watch the EWC.

I don't support it at all. I don't watch it in private. Nothing. I think that shit sucks. But the Saudi Arabian government's got a whole host of issues, human rights violations out the wazoo. I'm sure I don't need to go into a ton of detail into the nitty gritty. And honestly, just the whole idea of a government deciding that it wants to get its grubby paws around an entire industry and own the entire sector outright, that's fucking terrible

no matter what. So yeah, I don't like this at all. I hate what's happening in the esports space where every organization, every game, every brand basically has to suckle the teat of Saudi Arabia in some way, shape, or form. I don't like the direction. Now of course I understand why it's got to that point because there is just no money

there, but it doesn't change the fact that I don't like it. Now we have had players on our teams participate in like the EWC because as I've always said we don't take player winnings so them winning doesn't bring money back to us or anything and I'm not gonna get in the way of any of our players going and making their own decisions on how they want to like make a bag or something that is entirely up to them all power to

them and there's no ill will there at all. But they've not represented moist eSports at the EWC or anything like that. I know this is a long-winded tangent but the point is the Saudi Arabian government is doing this not only in just like EA or eSports but all across the whole spectrum of technology and entertainment. In fact just look up things that the Saudi Arabian government like the PIF has like percentages of. It's a lot. It's a ton, a ton of things. And many other video game companies, by the way. This is just their biggest buyout. This is huge. 55 billion dollars for EA is big.

And I do think there will be some noticeable changes to a lot of EA games and property. I think we're going to be in an era of even greedier EA garbage, if such a thing is even fathomable. So yeah, overall I don't think this is going to be like an improvement to EA games or anything like that. I don't think consumers are going to walk away from this kind of deal with a big W for

the quality of games we're going to start receiving here. I guess I'm willing to be proven wrong, but I highly fucking doubt that. I think it's going to be net negative changes across the board for EA games going forward. But one other thing I want to briefly mention, I've seen some people talking about EA in this story as if they're like some kind of defenseless victim or something like oh no the Saudi Arabian government they got EA in its clutches and there was nothing EA could do. Motherfucker they could have just said

no they didn't have to make the deal. It's not like EA is the good guy of the story or anything here. Like this is across-the-board just greed. Like it's story or anything here. Like this is across-the-board just greed. Like it's just absurd. Anyway though that's really about it.