AAA gaming feels so tired (and tiresome) that this news barely registers for me. The last EA game I played was the excellent C&C remaster - and EA's main contribution was getting out of the way of the project. They still own the rights to a ton of legendary IP - SimCity, Command & Conquer, Battlefield, but I don't have illusions that new iterations of that IP will be any good.
I know this is probably part of the Saudi strategy of "sportswashing"[1], but I don't really care about EA or their legacy anymore.
> The last EA game I played was the excellent C&C remaster - and EA's main contribution was getting out of the way of the project.
Not only did they get out of the way, but they actively hired the studio that sprung up from the corpse of the original developers (Westwood): Petroglyph. Not only letting the original designers/developers do their thing, but giving them a chance to work on their own baby again.
It’s rare for larger companies to be willing to humble themselves for something like that, so they gained an iota of respect from me.
> The last EA game I played was the excellent C&C remaster - and EA's main contribution was getting out of the way
I still remember the “Westwood Studios Proudly Presents…” on the RA2 intro cutscene and that pride really shined through. Even the installer for the game was a blast (full-screen, dropped you into a faux game-UX and gave you a military briefing with their kickass soundtrack while the progress bar ran). Modern AAA games lack the soul that games of this time had.
Being a 1970's child that grew up with games alongside the industry, nowadays I mostly play retrogaming, retrogaming inspired, or digital versions of board games.
The quest for realism without gameplay of many AAA games, with exorbitant prices, and GB sized textures, is not something I care about.
I may spend more time playing something with Atari 2600 graphics, and enticing gameplay than caring about latest COD.
I would be busy for hours playing Laser Squad, Quazatron, ATF,....
I recently watched a youtube video by a gamer about 20 years younger than me who had discovered older games and was reflecting on how deeply different they feel compared to modern games.
The big difference she observed is that older games don't hold your hand the way modern games do. They expect you to think hard, work hard, use trial and error, and generally, in her words, "use your brain." She spent a while talking about how old games have a manual where new games have a lengthy tutorial, automap, quest log, helpful companion constantly telling you what to do next, etc. etc. etc.
She didn't quite get there herself, but the juxtaposition really brought it home for me: the reason modern AAA games hold your hand is because they have to. Because they're just too big: too many game mechanics, too many locations, too much story, etc. etc. etc. If they tried to just sit back and let the player play the game for themself, nobody would would even scratch the surface of the game before they get bored and leave.
It was a little liberating because I finally realized I really can just stop paying attention to AAA games in general, and I don't have to feel weird about it. I'm not going to say they're bad. Plenty of people enjoy them enough to support a company the size of EA. But I'm now prepared to recognize that the kind of gameplay experience that I grew up on and continue to find most compelling is fundamentally incompatible with a AAA-sized budget.
> I may spend more time playing something with Atari 2600 graphics, and enticing gameplay than caring about latest COD.
The first good console for me was the NES. I enjoyed the Atari 2600, but only because it was the best at that time. But I can still enjoy a good NES game.
There aren’t many games on the Atari 2600 that I would still consider fun today. Maybe not necessarily because of graphics, but the graphics were pretty bad too.
It’s interesting that most modern retro-style games seem to keep a higher color and resolution than even the last great 2D generation (SNES/Genesis).
There are some games that hold try to that generation’s specs, though, but I don’t see many go as far back as the NES (and especially not the 2600).
There’s a small niche of people that make/have made modern NES games (actual cartridges for the actual console or remakes of the console), and those that play them, but I’m not aware of any super popular ones. If anybody’s aware of any, let me know!
Fellow retro gamer here, though I typically find my fill in 8/16 bit era games. I too seldom get enjoyment from contemporary AAA games, and have stopped paying attention to those many years ago.
When I to find joy in recent titles, it is typically indie games, or titles from small studios.
Part of it may be that photorealism as a graphical style does not appeal to my senses, but that is not all. I think that in many ways contemporary games have the need of keeping me busy and engaged. When I hear that a game is 200+ hours of content, instead of being intrigued I feel just overwhelmed.
One of the most groundbreaking trilogies in gaming with tons of potential and it’ll get relegated to the dustbin of history no doubt.
If I was absurdly rich I’d buy up lots of underused and/or abused IP and start a game studio around it. I feel like that would be a good business if you have the capital to handle game dev costs
I assume the acquisition is mostly about the sports games and Battlefield but EA really is sitting on some fantastic IP: Bioware, Westwood, and Maxis were all great studios.
For those who want to play it. Mass Effect Legendary Edition plays great on a Steam Deck or medium pc, but also has 4k reolution. It’s €6 at the moment.
> RIP Mass Effect and by extension BioWare. One of the most groundbreaking trilogies in gaming with tons of potential and it’ll get relegated to the dustbin of history no doubt.
Maybe I started with BioWare too early, but everything after NWN felt incredibly empty... in that 'world breaks if you look left or right of the main plot' Call of Duty way.
Which is fine, but always gave me an itch that I was really strapped into a plot-on-rails amusement park ride rather than a world.
When first person games became a destination for gaming (and not just another genre that we move on from — like "fighting games") is when I checked out of gaming. I know, I know, there are no doubt plenty of cool indie games out there (and other genres) but I guess in the meantime I found other ways to spend my time and haven't really looked back into games.
(I think too "AAA" as a moniker is kind of a huge red flag for me anyway. Like how "Now a Major Motion Picture" means it will be artless and instead appeal to a broad demographic in the most banal of ways.)
A new civilisation game just got released, the most well known mainstream gaming series are either third person (GTA) or sport games (Fifa), there is the witcher - in no way has gaming be reduced to first person games, not even AAA.
EA is a big publisher, so things like Split Fiction/It Takes Two get sprinkled in with their yearly shovelware of new paint jobs for Madden, NHL, FIFA, The Sims 4, etc too. I'll also give them credit that not every remaster is crap (Mass Effect Legendary Edition was great).
Which is ironic given the origin of the name, Electronic *Arts* once positioned themselves as a haven for “software artists,” treating games as creative works on par with music and film. Now they feel more like a licensing machine, recycling IP until it’s dry and chasing live-service revenue. The contrast between what the name promised and what the company became is kind of bleak.
The irony really kicks in when you start to remember all the arguments for how capitalism leads to the best products. Seems we forgot to clarify "best for who?", but it's clear at least shareholders won something.
Yeah, admittedly my perspective is that of someone who thinks sports games peaked with NBA Jam (1993). The only other sports games I play are racing sims - which are also in a bad place, but I digress.
Not entire - football has Football Manager (def a niche compared to FIFA/EAFC, but still pretty major), and FIFA will one day publish their FIFA game (there was a licensing disagreement, so EA rebranded their game to EAFC, and FIFA kept the name and will presumably launch a game with it some day).
Thinking about EA (or any big publisher) as a monolith is quite counterproductive to generate a mental model. In practice it is several studios with an overlord. Some studios might still be independent enough that the overlord just stays out of the way.
I believe that Battlefield 4 was the last good Battlefield game. Biggest asset was fully self-hostable servers that provided progression, community control, and allowed gaming clans/organizations to actually community-build. Nowadays, forced matchmaking and limited party sizes really eliminate the ability to build large communities.
The consolidation of publishers/developers in controlling all of the online experience has started limiting online gaming's ability to be a reasonable third place.
As much as I love bf4, I will say bf1 really hit it out of the park. It was a fantastic game that ran well at launch and basically only got better with the dlcs. It's servers also seem to be immune to a ddos that regularly kill bf4 servers.
I'm sure the game will be well received, but the beta was enough to put me off from buying it, and you're talking to someone who bought bf5 and 2042 despite misgivings, so I have a pretty low bar.
The maps I've played are pretty much all close quarters maps with the exception of liberation peak. It's pretty clear they're courting the COD playerbase. The maps that do have vehicles are so small it makes no sense to have anything but humvees. They've once again given assault pretty much everything it needs to be a god class. No thanks. Not my battlefield, and I say this as someone who's got like 4k hours in bf3/4.
How much of the new Battlefield actually been coming from EA though? I feels like the relatively new "Battlefield Lab" (which EA seems to have a really hands-off approach with so far) seems to be the main credit for that.
Has there been any interviews or anything that clarifies how much EA been involved? Otherwise I'd continue give credit to the developers rather than the publisher.
Between the fact that I'm on the "no time" part of the "time to play but no money, money to buy but no time, pick one" saying, indies, some still-functioning Japanese studios, and the burgeoning "AA" segment of the market, where people in the 2020s use 2020s technology with a team of maybe a dozen or two to put out what would have been AAA games produced by hundreds of people in the 2010s, I've had no use for the AAA space for a while. Or the gacha space; you don't need to create an open wound in your wallet just to play some decent games.
I've noticed this attitude is not yet "mainstream" but the first and the second derivative of its prevalence ought to worry the AAA industry. If their moat essentially collapses to "we can afford to spend a bazillion dollars on marketing" their death won't be too many years behind.
EA has an interesting strategy on offering a good value for their paid EA Play and EA Play pro plan. For example, if you find yourself in these specific genres:
Sports:
- Madden
- FC Soccer
- F1
This area should grow to cover other major sports. Others have mentioned how strong the sports offering is, and it’s also worth noting how strong Wii Sports was for the monumental success of the Wii.
FPS:
- Battlefield more or less
The Battlefield universe can cover anything you can dream of when it comes to FPS, so that’s another platform that is still a growth sector imho.
Like them or not, EA has been a major force in gaming for over 40 years (I used to work there). They invented the term "Game Producer". Their early vision for promoting Game Designers like hollywood Directors was ahead of its time. They have a hallway lined with gold discs of million seller hit games. They basically created the casual gaming industry (The Sims Division, Pogo, Casual Divisions) in a time when games were mostly marketed to boys.
I respect this company a lot, even though they always seem to do things that embitter the gaming community against them.
Unfortunately these types of buyouts usually come with layoffs, after a year of tough layoffs in games. I hope anyone who will be affected can land somewhere safe.
The campus has a labyrinth with a plaque that's always inspired me: "As in life, the walls are only in your mind."
The company you admire died a long time ago. Their focus today isn't on these historic franchises but releasing the same FIFA every year with new forms of microtransactions to hook a new generation of teenagers. And they have already laid off several thousand employees in the last 2-3 years.
This move will only lay off thousands more, sadly. Like the gaming industry needed even more veterans kicked out.
It's definitely not good times at all, no matter how you feel about the companies. Three of the largest 3rd party western studios in the last 3 years are being bought out. This doesn't bode well no matter where you are or what you consume in the industry.
I am old enough to remember a time when I had positive associations with being an "EA game".
The games in question were on my Commodore 64. But still, there was such a time.
EA has a reputation for buying companies and draining all of their reputation for money. The first company that the EA of today did that to was EA itself. There was a time it was just a gaming company.
Actually it was about up to the Origin acquisition that I still had at least some positive feelings for them, before the pattern really settled in. After that, though, I got nothin'.
> EA has a reputation for buying companies and draining all of their reputation for money
If you saw this from the other side you'd see just how much the reverse was true. This was one of the great mysteries of the place.
It's one of those situations where in the public perception the blame all flows up to EA, but the credit is always with the studios. The truth is somewhere else.
Yeah, in the C64 days, when I could afford to buy a game at retail, it would often be an EA game, because they had some of the best. I still remember the logo flashing through the 16-color set, and how you could tell whether the game had a fast-loader by how fast it flashed.
They were pretty universally admired then, as far as I can remember, but not for much longer.
you're remembering the start, when Trip Hawkins left Apple and really pushed the industry - both technically and culturally - forward. THose days probably died before the turn of the century.
Yeah, I worked there too and share this sentiment:
> I respect this company a lot, even though they always seem to do things that embitter the gaming community against them.
What I saw, more often than not, was most of the company consisted of the biggest genuine fans of their own products, and it was a few well placed ultra cynical bad apples that persisted in causing such enormous antagonism.
>it was a few well placed ultra cynical bad apples that persisted in causing such enormous antagonism.
Too bad those bad apples were the ones all the way at the top. Kotick's "we'll charge for reloads during an online match" statements really were a harbinger on what those in power thought of gaming as.
There was a time in the earlier days of EA where the company had value. That time has passed. The company mainly sits on exclusive licenses and makes minimal changes to the franchises in an attempt to milk cash. The cash milking part has gone downhill recently.
I genuinely hope they lose ALL of their exclusive sports licenses. They shouldn't be exclusive to begin with, but enabling these companies to hold the entire place hostage with their inferior and poorly crafted games just drives away competition and makes everyone play something else.
I have zero interest in football, soccer, basketball games, etc. but I did play them as a kid and I know young kids play sports games more. The fact that Madden has been re-publishing that game with the same Groundhogs Day release notes for 20+ years speaks volumes.
I worked there too (2002-2004), but didn't that all happen when the founder Trip Hawkins was there? It looks like he left in 1991
I don't think you can meaningfully call EA the same company -- it's more like a different company with the same name, and doesn't deserve respect for its past achievements
By the time I was there, over 20 years ago now, the management was already shitty. The people were great, but the management took advantage of employees' love for games. (I was part of the "EA Spouse" settlement)
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In fact I now remember an utterly bizarre experience when I was an intern at EA. The CFO spoke in front of 20 interns, and reminded us that our jobs was to make the stock price go up. Like whenever you do anything, you should think about the stock price as your ultimate goal. So the company isn't really about making games?
I mean I can appreciate his honesty, compared to later big tech "make the world a better place" slogans, while also just trying to make the number go up
But it's a weird thing to say to a bunch of 22 year olds, since they have little influence on the stock price, other than trying to increase their knowledge of the craft
There were a number of other shady characters in EA management. They were often brought in from outside
Even though I criticized "don't be evil", I have to say that by and large Google management was much more competent, and they came off as kinder, even though the company changed eventually too
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I do think it has to do with whether the founder still leads the company -- there has to be someone mission-driven, not just money-driven
I think Trip Hawkins was mission-driven. Larry Page was to an extent, but I think he got sick of managing the company, so he let the optimizers take over
And private equity are almost universally short-term optimizers, in favor of themselves and against customers, which tends to ruin the company in the long term. So I see this as a continuation of a multi-decade trend with EA.
Though I'd be interested in any counterexamples, i.e. private equity that actually made the company better in the long term
It seems like these types of buys are often associated with offloading debt to the bought company so that it can be shed to a company that they can then let bankrupt and then pay pennies on the dollar of their debt, if they have to pay anything. EA seems like a prime candidate for that.
It seems likely that they will consolidate their studios and streamline the headcoputn. Bioware may be dead for good, at least to the extent that it is still alive at this point. And there are probably other acquired studios like that.
If Bioware can squeak out one more good Mass Effect it would make for a great swan song. I don't really know what the last EA game I bought was other than the Mass Effect trilogy on Steam. I started avoiding Ubisoft games after Assassin's Creed 3 and EA followed a few years after that- so maybe 2015ish?
Except the entire idea that games should be promoted like hollywood movies is _exactly_ what precipitated this whole downfall. Games are not movies nor should they be like movies.
Personally I hope there are tons of layoffs. The entire industry needs to be rinsed clean and refreshed, especially the US gaming industry.
I believe the GP's point was not "games need to focus on cinematics and mind breaking graphics over gameplay". It was how you make brands based on people, not teams. Jane's Combat Simulator, American McGee's Alice in Wonderland, Sid Meier's Games (when Fireaxis had closer relations with them), Clive Barker's Undying.
We have indies who embody their games, but EA was doing this well before that. And AAA companies never really tried doing this since (though some directors did market themselves very well despite that. Like Kojima or Romero). It's a shame we have husks walking under a brand when all the personality has long left.
Why does promoting games as if they were movies is an issue? Is this just about the rising development costs of AAA games, or is there something else here that you're alluding to?
There's a recent book called "Plunder: Private Equity's Plan to Pillage America", and seeing this news makes me want to revisit it. The author outlines the usual tactics used by private equity firms to turn a functioning business into their own short-term profit factory, often driving the business into bankruptcy in the process. EA already has a reputation as a semi-broken company, but things can probably get a lot worse.
One method they use is the consolidation of a bunch of small, related businesses. For example, PE firms buy out all of the local veterinary offices in a tri-city area, cut costs, lay off the most qualified vets and replace with less-qualified ones, increase prices for services, and operate a local monopoly.
Clearly, that particular tactic is much harder to pull on the massive oligopoly that is the gaming industry, but it was the one that stuck with me from the book. There are more baffling ones like selling off all the company's real estate, making them rent it back at a much higher rate than their current mortgages (which may already have been paid off), and then filter revenues out of the company via "consulting fees" paid to themselves and their friends for this bad advice.
The book is a little bit repetitive, and some of the tactics are beyond my grasp, but I'm excited to make a personal bingo card of them and see which ones get used on EA as they drive it into the ground.
I read this book, and it's OK but both repetitive and biased. Surprisingly more "textbook" oriented works on PE are harder to find. Wiley had one but it's about 10 years old. The term "PE" also covers a lot of different models, from the worst 80's-style LBO "greed is good" ones, to honest invest-advise-stay out of the way funds. These modern huge deals almost always seem closer to the former. Having now been very close to two PE buy-outs and a big VC funding event, I think I actually prefer VC. Everyone is very transparent and open about what they are trying to do: pour rocket fuel on a fire and get rich. PE wants it all: big annual cashflow, cut all mid/long term costs (R&D, investment, etc) a juicy multiplier on the sale when they flip it to the next PE fund. Most recently I was at a 15 year old company that was doing 25% YoY ARR growth - amazing right? Well no, we were not covering our debt servicing from the most recent PE purchase, so had to cut everywhere and had a hiring freeze. You couldn't get any support to build for the next decade, because funds don't last that long and you don't want to be selling a company in the middle of a project that isn't generating revenues this year. It all makes me mad, sad and very tired.
EA is the perfect candidate for private equity to destroy. There are zombie companies that need to be eviscerated, digested, and then excreted back into the world. The megacompanies of the video game industry are the result of a broken market and this is "nature healing itself." The free market will course correct and private equity is a perfectly acceptable vehicle for something like EA
We don't need to guess here though. PIF and Silver Lake have a pretty solid track record of over-investing in companies. Affinity Partners seems to be a shell company for the Trump family so I don't see them being active.
Finally the beginning of the end of EA. The greedy bastards ruined so many franchises and chased so many fads that their absence will be a net positive. I do feel bad for the devs working there... but them having to find new jobs is genuinely the only negative aspect in all of this.
I have very little respect for any company that is only interested in the next couple of financial quarters and in making their shareholders as much money as fast as possible (while all else can go f itself). And that's exactly the kind of company EA was for at least a decade. Good riddance.
>I do feel bad for the devs working there... but them having to find new jobs is genuinely the only negative aspect in all of this.
In this job market, that's a pretty big negative. And EA was one of the biggest employers in the US. This is this industry's equivalent of Wal Mart leaving the market. The damage will be felt for years.
I think you're also downplaying the last extinguishing of hope for any non-sportsball IP's to be revived. Those wishing for Need for Speed, Mass Effect, Burnout, Dragon Age, and many many more IP's over the last 40 years aren't just going to say "good riddance".
I literally cannot imagine why people think being purchased by an incredibly wealthy regime looking to extend goodwill to manage their global image would… destroy you?
Like yeah this is definitely a money thing, but to assume day one will be greedy and not part of a longer term strategy makes no sense to me.
Edit: honestly I expect the company to significantly improve. It’s almost like assuming a restaurant will fail because Thailand started backing it. Yeah, they’re “foodwashing”, if you will, but the purpose is to spread culture and make their people seem more familiar globally.
I am finding myself having some conflicted feelings on this.
First, I absolutely hate who is buying them. Especially as a huge Bioware fan with a Mass Effect tattoo.
That being said, putting aside who is buying them for a moment. I would actually be happy to see more gaming companies going fully private. I feel like the need for constant growth (instead of just sustainability) is what has caused much of the issues in the current gaming market.
So not exactly super excited about how exactly this is happening, but I do hope that we can see other gaming companies do it with better sources.
Muhammad Bonesaw grew up on Age of Empires, and enjoys(/enjoyed) CoD. They also want to use it to shape global perspective. I think signs are good, or at least less-bad.
To be fair, if they're actually buying it for the whole sportswashing thing and not for the short-term cash profits, could it maybe be a good thing for the games? Better games == more effective sportswashing?
A company taking themselves private could be pretty good, but leveraged PE stuff will demand profit to pay down the loan and pretty much always have the same motivation for growth as investors.
This $56B company just took on an additional $20B in debt for this to go private. Now not only do they need to make profits, they need to squeeze even more juice to pay the interest on that $20B.
This will probably result in more money extracting schemes and less editorial freedom, even without thinking about MBS having a massive amount of influence in the company now.
Not necessarily. Private ownership can give you the benefit of operating at a stagnate revenue since it still represents a positive income stream for the owners.
This is an impossible status for public ownership as people don’t want a stock that stays at 10usd for multiple subsequent quarters. They see it as an investment. So you either have to offer significant dividends or find a way to show growth. If not, investors lose interest and your value drops, despite being perfectly profitable.
That’s not to say this private owner set will be happy with that, but that’s the benefit private ownership offers over public capital.
The classic PE business model is buying underperforming businesses, cutting costs, optimising their operations, and then selling the company for a profit after a couple of years (or taking it public). PE are usually less focussed on growth and more focussed on squeezing the most out of what is already there.
BioWare doesn't have to be active for PE to crap on their legacy.
BioWare games notably moved the needle forward on allowing same-sex relationships in their games. [0] Should we expect that such things might be removed from the existing titles under Saudi ownership?
Honestly I disagree and I feel like this is largely parroted without playing the games.
SWTOR was maintained pretty well for a while and was fun.
The issues with ME3's ending were blown way out of proportion and was still a fantastic trilogy.
Andromeda had its issues no doubt about it but I am still mad at a certain website deciding that they were going to just go hard on attacking it. It was a fun game, it had some development issues and some nasty bugs at launch. But was still fun.
Anthem... man that game had potential but just was not ready to ship. Was a ton of fun to play and I loved the bits of story we got but it really was just a tease of a story sadly.
DA Veilguard... definitely not up to the standard that Bioware set but there is still something uniquely Bioware about the characters that I fell in love with. That games potential was not helped by a vocal minority being mad about one specific character and not caring about anything else in the game.
Has Bioware gone down since their peak? Yeah. But I think claims that they are dead are overblown and people parroting it on youtube for clicks sure isnt helping that sentiment. Play the games and make your own decision.
Yup, many private equity deals ultimately are to break a company up into spare parts (to sell individual IPs/sub-brands to the highest bidder.) The extra debt the buyout saddles the company with is in part to build a bankruptcy case to kick off that spare parts auction.
Microsoft paid dividends every year in the 2000s and their share price barely ever broke $40. Most shares in large companies are owned by pension funds, mutual funds and hedge funds. Without share appreciation, the value of these funds don't grow. They make far more money through share price growth than they do in dividends, so they advocate for the company to operate in a way that makes that happen.
A company going private is, in general, a good thing because they're less shackled by investors and capital.
However this is the rare exception because this is more about oligarchs making a play for total control over the media sphere rather than any sort of financial independence. That said, cornering the entertainment side of things is going to be much harder especially since the people that do this kind of thing have zero clue what a video game even is or how to make a profitable one.
Not referencing the Saudi Arabia portion here specifically but LBOs as documented in the book Barbarians at the Gate (covers Nabisco/RJR tobacco) gives me basically zero hope for the future of EA. EA was already rabid cost-cutters and RIF specialists, and they won the most hated company award for however many consecutive years for a reason. Giving them crushing debt to go along with their propensity to give large executive bonuses and stomp their workforce is not a good recipe long-term
Are there any examples where a company was purchased via a leveraged buyout and the company went on to be more profitable afterwards? Because the only examples I know of resulted in the purchased company going bankrupt fairly quickly.
leverage increases the disparity of returns (so some companies are definitely out of business because the of the leverage put on them) but by far the vast majority of LBO’s are at least moderately successful.
Many sports teams come to mind. Pretty much any F1 team that exists is now worth a lot more on paper than it was purchased for. A few EPL teams come to mind too.
It would be fantastic if EA went away. They've been such a blight on the entire industry, killed off or destroyed so many good franchises, developers, and studios.
Does EA 202X stomp their workforce? I had a vague idea that this was largely a thing of the past.
The wiki article linked cites a lot of abuse, but all of it is nearly 2 decades old. My understanding was that it course corrected, and is one of the better gaming firms to work for ATM.
Jason Schreier (sp?) is probably the journalist with the best track record on covering EA and it’s generally been rotten all the way down. His recent book Play Nice focuses on just Blizzard but I wouldn’t be surprised if he does one on EA someday because they are in a league of their own when it comes to toxic workplace practices
I was hoping the launch of early access skate. would be received poorly, it was due to the beloved franchise being made into a Fortnite-like money grabbing scheme, would cause them to run backwards and fix it releasing an actual skate series game with some live service features but a solid focus on the original franchise. However that hope is dwindling.
EA won the most hated company award because video game players are dramatic. Charging $5 for a launch DLC is a drop in the bucket compared to the ways that some larger more critical companies can affect your life.
EA has been a target of scorn for a while because of a laundry list of issues (including pay-to-win schemes, loot boxes, treatment of employees, etc.) which is long enough to warrant its own dedicated wikipedia page.
Sure, their “crimes” are minor compared to RealPage raising rents on everyone but it wasn’t because gamers were dramatic. It was most hated because it was so in your face.
Nah, EA's history is laden with terrible decisions, killing creative teams, neglecting good project's marketing and killing them in the process because they had another internal game in the same genre and the like. It's a fucking cesspit of a company.
And they sit on a lot of good franchises and they literally do nothing with them.
At some point, the debt buyers will (or should) balk over the track record of this debt, or the company has enough collateral that they're happy either way.
The debt buyers are the same people that created that debt (the people doing the LBO in the first place). They force the company they just bought to pay them loan terms they set for the privilege of buying the company they just bought. That's why LBOs are pretty much a corporate Ponzi scheme. It's just too bad it is a currently legal Ponzi scheme. It might be nice to have legislation to prevent it.
Readit News
I know this is probably part of the Saudi strategy of "sportswashing"[1], but I don't really care about EA or their legacy anymore.
[1] https://www.eurogamer.net/ea-sports-fc-24-boss-on-sportswash...
Not only did they get out of the way, but they actively hired the studio that sprung up from the corpse of the original developers (Westwood): Petroglyph. Not only letting the original designers/developers do their thing, but giving them a chance to work on their own baby again.
It’s rare for larger companies to be willing to humble themselves for something like that, so they gained an iota of respect from me.
I still remember the “Westwood Studios Proudly Presents…” on the RA2 intro cutscene and that pride really shined through. Even the installer for the game was a blast (full-screen, dropped you into a faux game-UX and gave you a military briefing with their kickass soundtrack while the progress bar ran). Modern AAA games lack the soul that games of this time had.
The tracks in FIFA 14-15 was also so much better than the tracks in today's FIFAs. In every way. They handpicked not-mainstream songs too
The quest for realism without gameplay of many AAA games, with exorbitant prices, and GB sized textures, is not something I care about.
I may spend more time playing something with Atari 2600 graphics, and enticing gameplay than caring about latest COD.
I would be busy for hours playing Laser Squad, Quazatron, ATF,....
The big difference she observed is that older games don't hold your hand the way modern games do. They expect you to think hard, work hard, use trial and error, and generally, in her words, "use your brain." She spent a while talking about how old games have a manual where new games have a lengthy tutorial, automap, quest log, helpful companion constantly telling you what to do next, etc. etc. etc.
She didn't quite get there herself, but the juxtaposition really brought it home for me: the reason modern AAA games hold your hand is because they have to. Because they're just too big: too many game mechanics, too many locations, too much story, etc. etc. etc. If they tried to just sit back and let the player play the game for themself, nobody would would even scratch the surface of the game before they get bored and leave.
It was a little liberating because I finally realized I really can just stop paying attention to AAA games in general, and I don't have to feel weird about it. I'm not going to say they're bad. Plenty of people enjoy them enough to support a company the size of EA. But I'm now prepared to recognize that the kind of gameplay experience that I grew up on and continue to find most compelling is fundamentally incompatible with a AAA-sized budget.
The first good console for me was the NES. I enjoyed the Atari 2600, but only because it was the best at that time. But I can still enjoy a good NES game.
There aren’t many games on the Atari 2600 that I would still consider fun today. Maybe not necessarily because of graphics, but the graphics were pretty bad too.
It’s interesting that most modern retro-style games seem to keep a higher color and resolution than even the last great 2D generation (SNES/Genesis).
There are some games that hold try to that generation’s specs, though, but I don’t see many go as far back as the NES (and especially not the 2600).
There’s a small niche of people that make/have made modern NES games (actual cartridges for the actual console or remakes of the console), and those that play them, but I’m not aware of any super popular ones. If anybody’s aware of any, let me know!
When I to find joy in recent titles, it is typically indie games, or titles from small studios.
Part of it may be that photorealism as a graphical style does not appeal to my senses, but that is not all. I think that in many ways contemporary games have the need of keeping me busy and engaged. When I hear that a game is 200+ hours of content, instead of being intrigued I feel just overwhelmed.
One of the most groundbreaking trilogies in gaming with tons of potential and it’ll get relegated to the dustbin of history no doubt.
If I was absurdly rich I’d buy up lots of underused and/or abused IP and start a game studio around it. I feel like that would be a good business if you have the capital to handle game dev costs
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1328670/Mass_Effect_Legen...
Part of the EA autumn sale. More discounts here:
https://store.steampowered.com/developer/EA/sale/ea-autumn-s...
Maybe I started with BioWare too early, but everything after NWN felt incredibly empty... in that 'world breaks if you look left or right of the main plot' Call of Duty way.
Which is fine, but always gave me an itch that I was really strapped into a plot-on-rails amusement park ride rather than a world.
When first person games became a destination for gaming (and not just another genre that we move on from — like "fighting games") is when I checked out of gaming. I know, I know, there are no doubt plenty of cool indie games out there (and other genres) but I guess in the meantime I found other ways to spend my time and haven't really looked back into games.
(I think too "AAA" as a moniker is kind of a huge red flag for me anyway. Like how "Now a Major Motion Picture" means it will be artless and instead appeal to a broad demographic in the most banal of ways.)
They own the entire sports gaming genre, and it's a massive money maker.
NBA Live hasn't caught up to 2K for a long time and Sony still has MLB
The consolidation of publishers/developers in controlling all of the online experience has started limiting online gaming's ability to be a reasonable third place.
They're even shipping Godot based modding tools.
The maps I've played are pretty much all close quarters maps with the exception of liberation peak. It's pretty clear they're courting the COD playerbase. The maps that do have vehicles are so small it makes no sense to have anything but humvees. They've once again given assault pretty much everything it needs to be a god class. No thanks. Not my battlefield, and I say this as someone who's got like 4k hours in bf3/4.
How much of the new Battlefield actually been coming from EA though? I feels like the relatively new "Battlefield Lab" (which EA seems to have a really hands-off approach with so far) seems to be the main credit for that.
Has there been any interviews or anything that clarifies how much EA been involved? Otherwise I'd continue give credit to the developers rather than the publisher.
I've noticed this attitude is not yet "mainstream" but the first and the second derivative of its prevalence ought to worry the AAA industry. If their moat essentially collapses to "we can afford to spend a bazillion dollars on marketing" their death won't be too many years behind.
You should try Factorio, it'll find the time for you.
Sports:
- Madden
- FC Soccer
- F1
This area should grow to cover other major sports. Others have mentioned how strong the sports offering is, and it’s also worth noting how strong Wii Sports was for the monumental success of the Wii.
FPS:
- Battlefield more or less
The Battlefield universe can cover anything you can dream of when it comes to FPS, so that’s another platform that is still a growth sector imho.
I think this is a very lucrative approach.
I wonder if the new owners would care to port it or sell it again.
I respect this company a lot, even though they always seem to do things that embitter the gaming community against them.
Unfortunately these types of buyouts usually come with layoffs, after a year of tough layoffs in games. I hope anyone who will be affected can land somewhere safe.
The campus has a labyrinth with a plaque that's always inspired me: "As in life, the walls are only in your mind."
It's definitely not good times at all, no matter how you feel about the companies. Three of the largest 3rd party western studios in the last 3 years are being bought out. This doesn't bode well no matter where you are or what you consume in the industry.
The games in question were on my Commodore 64. But still, there was such a time.
EA has a reputation for buying companies and draining all of their reputation for money. The first company that the EA of today did that to was EA itself. There was a time it was just a gaming company.
Actually it was about up to the Origin acquisition that I still had at least some positive feelings for them, before the pattern really settled in. After that, though, I got nothin'.
If you saw this from the other side you'd see just how much the reverse was true. This was one of the great mysteries of the place.
It's one of those situations where in the public perception the blame all flows up to EA, but the credit is always with the studios. The truth is somewhere else.
They were pretty universally admired then, as far as I can remember, but not for much longer.
> I respect this company a lot, even though they always seem to do things that embitter the gaming community against them.
What I saw, more often than not, was most of the company consisted of the biggest genuine fans of their own products, and it was a few well placed ultra cynical bad apples that persisted in causing such enormous antagonism.
Too bad those bad apples were the ones all the way at the top. Kotick's "we'll charge for reloads during an online match" statements really were a harbinger on what those in power thought of gaming as.
(I had him as CEO too, I understand).
I genuinely hope they lose ALL of their exclusive sports licenses. They shouldn't be exclusive to begin with, but enabling these companies to hold the entire place hostage with their inferior and poorly crafted games just drives away competition and makes everyone play something else.
I have zero interest in football, soccer, basketball games, etc. but I did play them as a kid and I know young kids play sports games more. The fact that Madden has been re-publishing that game with the same Groundhogs Day release notes for 20+ years speaks volumes.
The company that just sold for $55 billion?
I don't think you can meaningfully call EA the same company -- it's more like a different company with the same name, and doesn't deserve respect for its past achievements
By the time I was there, over 20 years ago now, the management was already shitty. The people were great, but the management took advantage of employees' love for games. (I was part of the "EA Spouse" settlement)
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In fact I now remember an utterly bizarre experience when I was an intern at EA. The CFO spoke in front of 20 interns, and reminded us that our jobs was to make the stock price go up. Like whenever you do anything, you should think about the stock price as your ultimate goal. So the company isn't really about making games?
I mean I can appreciate his honesty, compared to later big tech "make the world a better place" slogans, while also just trying to make the number go up
But it's a weird thing to say to a bunch of 22 year olds, since they have little influence on the stock price, other than trying to increase their knowledge of the craft
There were a number of other shady characters in EA management. They were often brought in from outside
Even though I criticized "don't be evil", I have to say that by and large Google management was much more competent, and they came off as kinder, even though the company changed eventually too
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I do think it has to do with whether the founder still leads the company -- there has to be someone mission-driven, not just money-driven
I think Trip Hawkins was mission-driven. Larry Page was to an extent, but I think he got sick of managing the company, so he let the optimizers take over
And private equity are almost universally short-term optimizers, in favor of themselves and against customers, which tends to ruin the company in the long term. So I see this as a continuation of a multi-decade trend with EA.
Though I'd be interested in any counterexamples, i.e. private equity that actually made the company better in the long term
Personally I hope there are tons of layoffs. The entire industry needs to be rinsed clean and refreshed, especially the US gaming industry.
We have indies who embody their games, but EA was doing this well before that. And AAA companies never really tried doing this since (though some directors did market themselves very well despite that. Like Kojima or Romero). It's a shame we have husks walking under a brand when all the personality has long left.
Why does promoting games as if they were movies is an issue? Is this just about the rising development costs of AAA games, or is there something else here that you're alluding to?
Wow, I guess empathy is not a thing anymore
One method they use is the consolidation of a bunch of small, related businesses. For example, PE firms buy out all of the local veterinary offices in a tri-city area, cut costs, lay off the most qualified vets and replace with less-qualified ones, increase prices for services, and operate a local monopoly.
Clearly, that particular tactic is much harder to pull on the massive oligopoly that is the gaming industry, but it was the one that stuck with me from the book. There are more baffling ones like selling off all the company's real estate, making them rent it back at a much higher rate than their current mortgages (which may already have been paid off), and then filter revenues out of the company via "consulting fees" paid to themselves and their friends for this bad advice.
The book is a little bit repetitive, and some of the tactics are beyond my grasp, but I'm excited to make a personal bingo card of them and see which ones get used on EA as they drive it into the ground.
I have very little respect for any company that is only interested in the next couple of financial quarters and in making their shareholders as much money as fast as possible (while all else can go f itself). And that's exactly the kind of company EA was for at least a decade. Good riddance.
In this job market, that's a pretty big negative. And EA was one of the biggest employers in the US. This is this industry's equivalent of Wal Mart leaving the market. The damage will be felt for years.
I think you're also downplaying the last extinguishing of hope for any non-sportsball IP's to be revived. Those wishing for Need for Speed, Mass Effect, Burnout, Dragon Age, and many many more IP's over the last 40 years aren't just going to say "good riddance".
Like yeah this is definitely a money thing, but to assume day one will be greedy and not part of a longer term strategy makes no sense to me.
Edit: honestly I expect the company to significantly improve. It’s almost like assuming a restaurant will fail because Thailand started backing it. Yeah, they’re “foodwashing”, if you will, but the purpose is to spread culture and make their people seem more familiar globally.
First, I absolutely hate who is buying them. Especially as a huge Bioware fan with a Mass Effect tattoo.
That being said, putting aside who is buying them for a moment. I would actually be happy to see more gaming companies going fully private. I feel like the need for constant growth (instead of just sustainability) is what has caused much of the issues in the current gaming market.
So not exactly super excited about how exactly this is happening, but I do hope that we can see other gaming companies do it with better sources.
I'm not sure the investment group attempting to diversify Saudi oil income is going to be less profit oriented than the stock market in general
For what it’s worth, MBS is reportedly an avid gamer.
Either way, human rights journalists lose.
This will probably result in more money extracting schemes and less editorial freedom, even without thinking about MBS having a massive amount of influence in the company now.
I think most companies satisfied for being sustainable are probably owned by their original founders or their families, not private equity.
This is an impossible status for public ownership as people don’t want a stock that stays at 10usd for multiple subsequent quarters. They see it as an investment. So you either have to offer significant dividends or find a way to show growth. If not, investors lose interest and your value drops, despite being perfectly profitable.
That’s not to say this private owner set will be happy with that, but that’s the benefit private ownership offers over public capital.
BioWare games notably moved the needle forward on allowing same-sex relationships in their games. [0] Should we expect that such things might be removed from the existing titles under Saudi ownership?
[0] https://medium.com/brinkbit/a-brief-history-of-biowares-lgbt...
SWTOR was maintained pretty well for a while and was fun.
The issues with ME3's ending were blown way out of proportion and was still a fantastic trilogy.
Andromeda had its issues no doubt about it but I am still mad at a certain website deciding that they were going to just go hard on attacking it. It was a fun game, it had some development issues and some nasty bugs at launch. But was still fun.
Anthem... man that game had potential but just was not ready to ship. Was a ton of fun to play and I loved the bits of story we got but it really was just a tease of a story sadly.
DA Veilguard... definitely not up to the standard that Bioware set but there is still something uniquely Bioware about the characters that I fell in love with. That games potential was not helped by a vocal minority being mad about one specific character and not caring about anything else in the game.
Has Bioware gone down since their peak? Yeah. But I think claims that they are dead are overblown and people parroting it on youtube for clicks sure isnt helping that sentiment. Play the games and make your own decision.
However this is the rare exception because this is more about oligarchs making a play for total control over the media sphere rather than any sort of financial independence. That said, cornering the entertainment side of things is going to be much harder especially since the people that do this kind of thing have zero clue what a video game even is or how to make a profitable one.
Hilton Hotels (2007) by Blackstone Group, Despite the 2008 crisis, refinanced and sold with a $14B profit
Safeway (1986) by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Restructured, sold underperforming stores, returned to profitability
HCA Healthcare (2006) by KKR & Bain Capital, Strong cash flow supported debt; remained stable and profitable
Dell Technologies (2013), Silver Lake Partners, Went private, streamlined operations, and rebounded strongly
RJR Nabisco (1989) by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts Iconic LBO; despite controversy, generated $53M profit
This give you some idea of the volume https://www.ropesgray.com/en/insights/alerts/2025/07/us-pe-m...
Twitter is yet an unfolding story but it seems to be working.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS4ENJCIYNM
The wiki article linked cites a lot of abuse, but all of it is nearly 2 decades old. My understanding was that it course corrected, and is one of the better gaming firms to work for ATM.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Electronic_Arts
And they sit on a lot of good franchises and they literally do nothing with them.
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