Summary
Just over a month on from a consortium led by the Saudi Arabian government’s Public Investment Fund taking over EA, [in a buyout worth 6 billion meaning any EA/Savvy merger’s not likely to happen right away. While an EA/Savvy merger would have to get the green light from antitrust regulators, just as the Saudi PIF’s initial deal to buy EA did, if it were to go through, it’d mean the formation of one of the largest fish in the games industry. Bloomberg speculate that merging with Savvy could see EA up their efforts in mobile gaming, rather than only focusing on console and PC. As for what else would result, given what typically happens with big mergers like Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the answer is most likely layoffs. EA staff have long feared that the Saudi acqusition will lead to mass job cuts and/or teams being ditched, given leveraged buyouts typically work by loading up the acquired company with debt which it must then pay out of the money it makes, providing execs more reason to ruthlessly cut the business to the bone with the aim of maximising profits. Despite some efforts by EA to reassure them, workers at the company have also cited concerns about their Saudi government owners, whom Amnesty International outline as having a terrible human rights record, influencing creative decisions on games going forwards. “The [crown] prince is not going to get on to a town hall and say ‘we are no longer doing these things’ but instead projects just won’t get signed because they don’t align explicitly with what the Saudi government wants or implicitly because [EA will think] ‘oh, we’re going to try and cater these things [to our owners] because if we pitch something else the government may not like or approve of it,” one anonymous EA staffer told Game Developer last month. Read Edwin’s interview with Star Wars: Zero Company devs Bit Reactor, whose publishing deal with EA was signed long before the takeover went through, for more reaction to the initial EA-Saudi deal from developers working with the publishers. Read this next
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