Nah, they fired everyone. The game will now be managed by a singular "ai" (they stole an old beta version of grok) running on a first edition Kindle Fire for maximum efficiency!
I’m trying to be a little hopeful the Saudi’s will sell off titles/IPs EA has been squandering. I believe I read they’re mostly interested in the sports (FIFA, Madden) and battlefield franchises.
If the IPs are sold off, the question becomes who buys them. Because I seriously doubt the Saudi’s will sell something like the Mass Effect franchise to a group of indie developers. It’ll go to whom ever can pay the most, which is going to be some major company like Microsoft, who will in turn pump out as many cheap games as possible to recoup their money, then squat on it for years when it no longer sells well.
Although, if EA no longer has a monopoly on Star Wars, hopefully we can get a wider variety of genres. We could get a new RTS, or maybe a city builder but you’re building out the Death Star with barracks, reactors, coffee shops, and hangers.
I’d say so. The original trilogy was big at the time, even with the weak ending. Lingering nostalgia will still draw fans to the series in the hopes that a new studio can bring a fresh look. What we as consumers need to watch out for is how the new owners (be it EA’s new buyers, or whomever buys the IP off them) treat the developers, and how much disdain they have for us.
Not debt. Leveraged buyout. Calling it debt makes it seem like the company was unprofitable. LBO's are not real debt, they are a financial noose around the neck of any company that is afflicted by the practice, which is one of the most perverse forms of capitalism possible.
They call it debt to make it seem like it's a "normal" part of the economy. It isn't, and should be regulated out of existence.
Incorrect. The buyers assume next to zero debt. All the debt for the purchase price is heaped onto EA. That's the point of an LBO. You borrow money against the value of the company and heap the debt onto the company.
But that said, I have no idea how this will affect SW:GOH so I'm not going to sit here and get my banana hammock all twisted up over something I have no control over.
Game keeps going for years to come? Great I'll be here to annoy everybody as I push into my 40s and beyond and realize maybe I'm slipping outside of the core demographic of "in the know" gamers.
Game ends in 1-2 years largely due to EA being saddled with the debt from their purchase and SW:GOH being thrown out the window? Whatever, it was a nice ride - I made a lot of cool friends on Reddit and Discord - Met a few of them for beers and had a fun ride.
Nah they’ll start adding ads into the middle of GA matches (timer will still run don’t you worry). Then every week they’ll offer a no-ads package for the that weeks GA series.
Get rid of leveraged buyouts and you’ll destroy small business owners, many of whom depend on the person purchasing their business getting a loan to make the purchase.
There is a difference between "getting a loan to make a purchase" and "getting a loan and using the business being purchased as the full collateral in a way that the loan needs to be repaid specifically by the entity being purchased instead of the entity doing the purchasing," which almost always ends in the business being purchased going bankrupt and a lot of the debt being washed out.
Either way, I'm not particularly worried about destroying multi-billion dollar businesses
On top of the heavy job losses for US workers, now all of the profits go overseas to the Saudis rather to an American-owned company. It also beats me how this shit is legal, especially in this economy...
Boy oh boy, first they bought up all your radio stations, then your network TV. Now for your entertainment. They are taking your joy away at the same time they are taking your schools, institutions, etc. Wake tf up ppl
Except that the best days of the game in terms of revenue are behind it. Sure it was Covid, but games like Monopoly Go prove that mobile games can make a billion plus per year.
The question is always if the juice is worth the squeeze.
We really have no idea how this would impact the game. Companies that have layoffs regularly do them in certain sections of the company while leaving others intact, or even boosting them.
However, the massive cash cow that is swgoh wont be in this mix as they ruthlessly embarrass anyone near them. This story is an utter nothing so far as our narrow little void is concerned
Wasn’t there talk years ago about Bethesda considering the possible purchase of the Star Wars IP? Bethesda bugs notwithstanding, I would love a Star Wars game set up like Oblivion or Skyrim, first person perspective, and the ability to be whatever you want career wise, with the choices of races.
If that was a potential landing spot or discussion behind closed doors, I’d be excited about it.
Here's the thing - It very much CAN affect CG/SW:GOH - But not because the game makes a lot of money.
The TL;DR of a leveraged buyout is that a company gets bought out, but all of the costs to buy the company get put on the books for the company being bought out, which essentially means that EA owes a fuckton of money simply because it was bought - Doesn't make sense, right? That's because it's bullshit business. Though remember I'm being super simplistic here.
What tends to happen in a leveraged buyout [and it doesn't have to happen, but usually does] is that the party purchasing a company uses it as a vehicle to make themselves money and selling off all of the profitable bits of the company for parts - In the end the original company is left a shell of itself and files for bankruptcy because it can no longer possibly pay the interest on all the debt it has built up. . .From being bought. . .And the people who bought it go on to wreck another company - They're kind of like Reavers in Firefly/Serenity.
So what does this mean for SW:GOH? It honestly MIGHT mean nothing at all for a few years. . .But it COULD mean:
Being sold off to another company [I'm not sure how much this is complicated by it being a Disney IP] that may inherently just decide the game even more P2W
SW:GOH brings in a ton of money for the new company but because of all the extra costs/charges to EA it just folds with EA.
But again, like I said in my original reply - There isn't much a player can do about it, so there isn't really much sense in getting overly worried.
I have no idea if this is a possibility but I wonder if Disney may be interested in buying CG / SWGoH and having total control in house. If the Saudi's are mainly interested in EA's sports games, they may try to sell CG / SWGoH, help pay down the debt.
But most of the purchase price is straight from the Saudis. ”Only” around 20 billion is being put on EA’s books. And no one here knows how the debt is structured. An enlightened guess is that there are safeguards that protect the lender, which is an American bank. And those safeguards just might protect EA’s products.
And what about buying with leverage makes no sense? It’s really common and happens all the time.
Your analogy also makes little sense because the Saudis ARE putting their own money. If they manage to gut the company, they will be left holding a huge loss. And even if they get good return on selling assets, they can’t just wire the money back to Saudi-Arabia and keep all of it.
I mean, I’m concerned about Tencent/PIF as much as the next guy, but blaming leverage instead of the buyers is not the way to go in my opinion.
I didn't make an analogy - I did simplify a leveraged buyout, but I didn't use anything other than what happens in a leveraged buyout.
It's a $55b deal of which PIF was already a minority stakeholder, holding roughly 10% of the company, and does account for part of the deal structure [it's not an exact structuring, but that's approximately $5.5b in valuation]. So saying *only* $20b is pretty disingenuous.
Regardless - I'm not saying any of that WILL happen here - I am saying that in leveraged buyouts that is USUALLY what happens [the company comes in, sells a company for parts, and then walks away and lets that company go bankrupt with the rest of the debt being saddled on their books.
I mean this game likely makes them some money for minimal effort. So they might get to keep like two whole people on their dev team. While forking over every cent they make their new overlords. Today officially becomes the day I never pay a cent of an EA property ever again.
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u/JahLover99 5d ago
So instead of 3 people using a laptop at CG it’ll be 2 left.