Lhamo Fitzsimons discusses the consequences of the Saudi-Kushner purchase of EA.
EA, ‘it’s in the game’ - an iconic slogan for the gaming icon Electronic Arts. They brought you FIFA, The Sims, Apex Legends, Mass Effect, Battlefield, and I could go on forever... but I’ll spare you. I’m sure you’ve heard about them or seen their logo flash on screen before playing your favourite games of all time.
You might also have heard of Jared Kushner. If you haven’t, I am sorry to be the one bringing you such misfortune. Jared Kushner is the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump. He’s married to Ivanka Trump, and was a senior advisor in his father-in-law's first term in the then un-demolished White House.
Well connected, with global access to money and power, but how is he connected to gaming, you ask? Is he secretly a pro League player? Does he drown Sims in the pool for fun? Maybe (unconfirmed, watch this space). What we do know is that right after his time in the White House, Kushner founded Affinity Partners, a ‘private’ equity firm where the ‘equity’ is the Saudi government's sovereign wealth fund. Together, they just bought EA.
$55 billion is an insane amount of money. Twitter sold for $44 billion, and the earth still trembles from that exchange. We’re talking the 1% of the 1% playing field. The world's most powerful players. So who does have that kind of cash, and where do they get it from? Who is behind the buyout, and who’s who of who now owns your (gaming addiction)?
Welcome to your new overlords, the lvl 999 bosses of the evil corporate takeover of planet Earth IRL.
We have…
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF).
I first discovered them when they bought, oh, just Pokémon Go. That’s right, PIF owns Savvy Gaming Group, who owns Scopely - who bought Niantic, the company behind Pokémon Go, in May this year. In case you didn’t know, Pokémon Go is also an evil geo data harvesting machine, go figure.
Silver Lake Partners.
A private equity firm into technology and media investments. Silver Lake is the cat that got the cream, I mean, that is set to take on management of TikTok’s U.S. operations. Well-connected, ties to Trump and Saudi Arabia - still better than a TikTok ban?
Affinity Partners.
Aka Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law. Coincidentally, it was noticed on Bluesky by journalist Stephen Totilo that Affinity Partners’ logo is an identical flipped image of the Abstergo fictional evil corporation in Assassin’s Creed. No, really… go look up Abstergo and Affinity Partners right now. ‘That’s a little on the nose,’ said one Bluesky user. Abstergo in Assassin’s Creed is an evil corporation designed to dominate and control the world through capitalism and technological progress. Of course, unlike Abstergo, Affinity Partners is… real.
Since the sale to our dystopian corporate Trumpian Saudi overlords, EA has faced waves of fear, outrage and backlash from developers and creators. This includes some of their biggest and well-known franchises, such as The Sims. By now, dozens have quit from their creator networks, and employees have walked out over concerns that the new owners will interfere with creative freedom, change inclusive values, and even lead to security risks.
Some of the obvious issues with this sale are the clear human rights violations and treatment of workers that Saudi Arabia is infamous for (death penalty, murder, modern slavery, casual stuff). You may have noticed the fact that many games EA has include criticism of despotic countries or contain basic themes and principles which are not only criminalised, but carry the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, such as homosexuality or gay marriage.
More issues arise when you think of data security and the use of player data, now accessible to the new owners. Finally, give a thought to the poor, poor state of competition or anti-trust law now that the monopolisation of the entire games industry has entered its penultimate boss phase. If you thought the Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard was a horrifying monstrosity and stain upon every competition law supposed to prevent the birth of behemoth monopolies of titanic proportions, you must be sobbing in the corner right now at the total failure of all regulation and oversight. As US Senators have put it, ‘What regulator is going to say no to the president's son-in-law?’ Other industry investors disagree with the backlash, ‘They’re going to take it private and they’re going to do what they’ve got to do to make this work,’ Michael Pachter, managing director of Wedbush Securities. They believe that going private will allow the games industry to flourish under their care.
The Guardian thinks the end goal is sportswashing, gameswashing, whitewashing, all to improve the Saudi Image; others say it will be used to control and influence younger generations. Vanity Fair has claimed that entertainment is the new oil, and private equity wants a slice. Reports have already started leaking out that the new owners want to reduce the workforce and push use of AI to replace teams and drive profit.
Will we be stuck with AI-slop games in future EA content? Or will this drive a golden era of private equity-driven creativity, free from the rise and fall of stocks.
How will it all end for gamers? Is the future of gaming doomed? Perhaps only time will tell, perhaps it’s already obvious.