The buyers are committing $36 billion of their own equity (briefly and inexpertly, “equity” is the value of your assets after you deduct anything you owe), including the value of the PIF’s existing investments in EA. They’re making up the rest of the total thanks to a $20 billion loan from JPMorgan Chase Bank. How will they manage that massive debt? According to the Financial Times, who cite unnamed insiders, they’re gambling on the deployment of generative AI tools as a gigantic cost-saving measure.
“The investors are betting that AI-based cost cuts will significantly boost EA’s profits in the coming years, people involved in the transaction told the Financial Times,” the paper wrote (paywall) in their own coverage of the story. The FT elsewhere commented that the acquisition “is a huge bet that artificial intelligence can significantly cut EA’s operating costs, allowing the equity consortium to manage a large debt load on a company that historically carried limited net debt.”
There’s a huge bet that most of us are going to boycott this tomfuckery and do no further business with EA.
Already have.
Unfortunately, will the EA Sports fans and Battlefield fans do the same?
If they hadn’t left already, they never will.
FIFA and Madden have been dog shit iterations for years and years and people keep buying them. Plus Battlefield 6 might actually be good and will test plenty of people (like me) who said “never again” long ago. Luckily I probably won’t actually be tempted because of EA anti cheat and Linux incompatibility.
I was all up for BF6. It releases in two weeks. A bunch of friends are going to get it. I was a bit annoyed that it was the only reason I’d still be using windows11 but I was prepared to wear it. But Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, fuck.that.noise. No way am I giving that cunt anti-cheat access to my computer.