From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sat, 27 Sep 2025 13:02:37 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, 27 Sep 2025 08:24:48 -0600, "rms"
<rsquiresMOO@MOOflashMOO.net> wrote:

And for all EA has its problems, I don't really think I'd like to see
it go out that way.

Nasty. More trump & saudi control of media is never a good thing.

Yeah, the companies buying EA don't inspire a lot of trust in the "we
want to make good games" sort of way.

I'm less worried about the involvement of the National Development
Fund. Yes, it's a Saudi Arabian wealth fund, but it's mostly there to
make the royal family of SA more wealthy and less dependent on their >petroleum resources. While it can (and in a few occasions, has) been
used to pressure the owned companies towards pro-SA politics, mostly
its designed to get maximum return from its investments. If that means >funding a company where the bad guys in the video games tend to be
Middle Eastern, well... money trumps all.

So, yeah... there's some concern with this sale because whichever way
it goes, I don't think that it'll end up benefiting the end-user video
gamer.

So, things are already looking bad for the EA purchase. The Saudi
Investment Fund --prime investor in the EA buyout-- is running low on
funds,* and it seems unlikely that the video-game companies it has
control of are going to be seeing much support. In fact, with the
Saudi Arabian fund struggling --many of its bigger projects, are in
serious trouble or on hold due to a lack of resources** -- it seems
ever more likely that companies like EA will be used to either prop up
the fund, or be sold --in whole or in pieces-- in order to get SOME
sort of return on investment.

Neither is good for EA. If the former, then EA's profits --already
being used to pay off the debt the PIF incurred buying the company--
will be further leeched off to fill the funds dwindling coffers. If
the latter, then EA as we know it will soon be as dead as Acclaim or
Interplay; a shell company whose most valuable asset will be its name
and the nostalgia it holds.

And while it's fun to grumble about the triple-A publishers like
Electronic Arts, let's also remember that not only is it a big
employer in the industry***, but without companies like EA we wouldn't
get triple-A games. And lets face it, for all their problems, those
big-ticket games are spectacles that leave their mark on the hobby. As
much as I appreciate what smaller developers and Indie do, I'd miss
the giant games if they weren't being made any more.

Of course, none of this was totally unexpected. A lot of the
investments made by the Saudi investment fund were really attempts to
shuttle money out of the national Fund and into the Saudi royal
family's personal pockets. (I don't necessarily think the EA purchase
fell into that category, but its bigger projects -- especially the
construction projects, like Shebara Island-- definitely were). EA will
just be a casualty of this greed.

Still, I think people probably expected a slightly longer timeline
before things started to go FUBAR.



----
* story here https://www.gamesindustry.biz/saudi-arabias-investment-fund-reported-to-be-limiting-new-investments-as-cash-runs-low

** including, most famously, "Project NEOM", a.k.a. "The Line", the
ridiculous city-building that was never going to happen. It's not
officially dead, but all new investments have been halted and there's
no new --and very little old-- construction in progress.

*** EA only employs around 15,000 people in-house, but as it
frequently makes use of contractors (for things like animation,
modeling, cinematics, translation, QA, and more) the number of people
actually depending on EA to fund games is probably closer to 50 -
100,000 total.


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