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.
They make all the sports games. Have you noticed all the sports and Mr. Beast type slop that's like "Wow and here we are inn Dubai / Saudi Arabia whatever and it's beautiful and luxurious and we're driving in Lambos waooowww"
If product placement didn't work it wouldn't be an industry
The 'core gamer' bubble has always been bad for this.
Sports games sell like hotcakes and have people buy them every year religiously but you never hear about them, sims too. Their other titles were heavy hitters.
Their just a seperate audience; EA certainly has influence, just not with people that talk about games.
I agree they're good at making games that sell to a mass audience - but I really think that a lot of franchises have wasted a ton of money partnering with EA, which makes poor quality games that are exactly the same as the one they printed out 12 months ago. I haven't heard anyone talking about an EA sports game since the PS1 era and they seem to have completely missed the e-sports era where DOTA and Fortnight made vast sums of money. Don't get me wrong, they've made a ton of money, but I think they could have made still far more in more competant hands.
Fabulously greedy FIFA seems to have realized this and is no longer partnering with them.
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 game development up and running. I guess they wanted EA to pay $300 million per year and EA said no, but I doubt FIFA made 50 million on the games they released.
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.
actually not. EA is a household name. You can ask every single person with a steam/xbox/psn account if they know ea. i guarantee you, 95% of them heard of EA and id say 80% of those have played an EA game in their lifetime.
That being said, influencing happens by mere exposure. There was a time, when Europeans bought up the kit of a bad mexican football club, just because the jersey was hyped on fifa 14. so if someone is trying to influence them, it will happen.
Do you think your average EA Sports FC or Battlefield player is even aware of that reputation? These games still sell tens of million of copies. Positive influence in Battlefield alone would be huge.
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.
Because the Saudis leveraged this buyout via a massive loan from JP Morgan, EA's debt is now 10 times higher than it was when it was a publicly traded company: $2.2b to $22b.
Turns out the notion that they wouldn’t need humans to make games and they would use AI for most things was a pipe dream and firing staff to be profitable with the huge loan didn't work.
Now they are fucked.
Every company that spends money to buy up companies died and goes defunct because they keep failing to realize that they have to keep spending loads of money to make money and it doesn’t just roll in after acquiring IPs. Not even mobile slop or live service can save them anymore.
You'll have to pay for it anyway. Games will get more expensive, there'll be more micro-transactions, etc. The investors as well as JP Morgan want their money back.
Realistically EA will never financially recover from this in its current form. Likely they will carve out 1-2 portions of it they can resell and the rest will die.
I wouldn't be so quick to assume the capital structure of a company influences its product decisions. Lots of well-funded, publicly traded companies are also screwing their customers for the sake of short-term revenue.
Want better games? Find them. Support the smaller studios and indie devs that produce quality, or contribute to a FOSS one.
I disagree. They're not gonna give up the brand recognition to rename it. They specifically wanted "Electronic Arts". EA has Battlefield, FIFA, The Sims, and Madden. Those four alone are probably responsible for 90% of the company's revenue.
If anything, now you can say that EA is doubly the worst company, especially in gaming.
Another big one is College Football, at least in the US. And in the latest edition they nerfed the offline single-player mode's XP progression. In return they added microtransactions to buy XP points. For offline single-player. Gachaification continues.
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 surprised to see that the HTTP links to the original D2 and D2 LoD setups were still alive, and the Win 9x-era downloader+installer still works just fine. I mean, how cool is that. And I could even log into battle.net and retrieve my CD keys too. For a 26yr old game.
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.
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.
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.
I'm not sure they're even the worst games company. Ubisoft would give them a run for their money but that's a $30 DLC over a $70 base price I refused to pay for.
No, EA earn every criticism and this move to PE will do absolutely nothing to improve their business practices.
rockskon | 4 days ago
bestouff | 4 days ago
gmerc | 4 days ago
nick486 | 4 days ago
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.
ReactiveJelly | 4 days ago
If product placement didn't work it wouldn't be an industry
charcircuit | 4 days ago
They are known for making games that sell to a mass audience and monetizing them well.
It's like calling McDonald's a joke. It doesn't take away that they are a successful business affecting many people in the world.
krige | 4 days ago
DimmieMan | 4 days ago
Sports games sell like hotcakes and have people buy them every year religiously but you never hear about them, sims too. Their other titles were heavy hitters.
Their just a seperate audience; EA certainly has influence, just not with people that talk about games.
rockskon | 4 days ago
Are you going to have MAGA Madden?
The Socialist League?
Morromist | 4 days ago
Fabulously greedy FIFA seems to have realized this and is no longer partnering with them.
Jach | 4 days ago
Morromist | 4 days ago
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 game development up and running. I guess they wanted EA to pay $300 million per year and EA said no, but I doubt FIFA made 50 million on the games they released.
danbolt | 4 days ago
If anything, FIFA was probably getting an incredible deal from EA given the cost of making AAA games today.
tayo42 | 4 days ago
nick486 | 4 days ago
If you want influence, there are waaay better value propositions.
sodastar | 4 days ago
That being said, influencing happens by mere exposure. There was a time, when Europeans bought up the kit of a bad mexican football club, just because the jersey was hyped on fifa 14. so if someone is trying to influence them, it will happen.
gambiting | 4 days ago
Do you think your average EA Sports FC or Battlefield player is even aware of that reputation? These games still sell tens of million of copies. Positive influence in Battlefield alone would be huge.
Yizahi | 4 days ago
kidfiji | 4 days ago
BLKNSLVR | 4 days ago
Starting the propaganda for a ground invasion. I wonder if this one one of the crowd-sourced ideas submitted to the DoD?
sph | 4 days ago
_carbyau_ | 4 days ago
krige | 4 days ago
Turns out the notion that they wouldn’t need humans to make games and they would use AI for most things was a pipe dream and firing staff to be profitable with the huge loan didn't work.
Now they are fucked.
Every company that spends money to buy up companies died and goes defunct because they keep failing to realize that they have to keep spending loads of money to make money and it doesn’t just roll in after acquiring IPs. Not even mobile slop or live service can save them anymore.
neilfrndes | 4 days ago
krige | 4 days ago
whatever1 | 4 days ago
You want to buy a company? Bring your own fucking money. Why do we have to pay for this shit?
hgomersall | 4 days ago
lazide | 4 days ago
tgv | 4 days ago
whatever1 | 4 days ago
zdc1 | 4 days ago
Want better games? Find them. Support the smaller studios and indie devs that produce quality, or contribute to a FOSS one.
whatever1 | 4 days ago
eudamoniac | 3 days ago
tomkarho | 4 days ago
Aardwolf | 4 days ago
LocalH | 4 days ago
If anything, now you can say that EA is doubly the worst company, especially in gaming.
krige | 4 days ago
LocalH | 4 days ago
hurfdurf | 4 days ago
croes | 4 days ago
vunderba | 4 days ago
d3Xt3r | 4 days ago
vunderba | 3 days ago
gspr | 4 days ago
hurfdurf | 4 days ago
snowram | 4 days ago
thefz | 4 days ago
Yizahi | 4 days ago
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.
techjamie | 4 days ago
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.
oliwarner | 4 days ago
No, EA earn every criticism and this move to PE will do absolutely nothing to improve their business practices.
inigyou | 4 days ago
Yizahi | 4 days ago
LarsDu88 | 4 days ago
johanvts | 4 days ago
waste_monk | 4 days ago
seattle_spring | 4 days ago
Morromist | 4 days ago
jredwards | 4 days ago
Morromist | 4 days ago
LarsDu88 | 3 days ago
sph | 4 days ago
There’s a whole world of gaming out there.
LarsDu88 | 3 days ago
lovich | 4 days ago
Is the Trump family just going to own all of our entertainment and military companies?
BLKNSLVR | 4 days ago
Are we the Bad Guys?
Not any more. Now we're the Worse Guys.
nrightnour | 3 days ago
lovich | 3 days ago
anal_reactor | 4 days ago
thefz | 4 days ago
nrightnour | 3 days ago
If they aren't completely toast, they'll be a shell of what they are today, which is already a shell of what they once were.