I’m ill informed on what this means. Could someone explain this to me in layman terms, and how this could negatively or positively impact the next Mass Effect game?
There are a few concerns here. Setting aside the giant elephant in the room that is Saudi interests buying a large chunk of EA and potentially insisting on creative decisions that align with their politics (while whitewashing their human rights violations with good PR and having our video game purchases funding future human rights violations) - there's the issue of EA being bought by private equity. That would be a big red flag regardless of where the money is going.
In simple terms, private equity firms take investors' money and buy struggling companies with the goal of turning a profit. While on paper you'd think they'd act in the best interest of that company, restructuring to increase long term profitability - that's not what PE firms tend to do. Very often they are ruthless vultures who will pick at the corpse of a company until there's nothing but bones left and then they'll liquidate and try to sell those bones for whatever profit they can squeeze from them. Then they move on to another struggling company and rinse and repeat.
If you thought EA was already too eager to make profit driven decisions at the expense of the quality of their products - EA as run by private equity is likely going to be significantly worse.
Sheesh, maybe I shouldn’t have asked… thanks for the explaining it to me, this certainly doesn’t sit well with me considering I’m looking forward to more Mass Effect. Is there any way the ME IP can be sold to another publisher/developer? Does stuff like that happen?
it does but its very unlikely with one of the biggest franchises EA/Bioware has under its belt.. Its like if Ubisoft would sell Far Cry or Assassins Creed.
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u/Jonesizzle Sep 27 '25
I’m ill informed on what this means. Could someone explain this to me in layman terms, and how this could negatively or positively impact the next Mass Effect game?