r/masseffect • u/Rondine1990 • Aug 05 '26

NEWS Its official, Saudi-led group bought EA...

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/aug/05/video-game-maker-ea-bought-by-saudi-led-group

I honestly fear for the open-minded future of our franchise. Mass Effect was a big part of my life, and I loved that it tackled topics that might be controversial in its own way. It was never in your face, but subtle enough to be believable... especially with the choice of a badass female Shepard.

Let's hope they don't meddle too much, too quickly...

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u/Yukina-Kai Aug 05 '26

I'm betting a few IPs/Studios get used and the rest sold. That would make the most sense logically and financially.

The sports games will get used because the people buying them are absolutely mindless and will pay for it with absolutely no regard to it's quality. (Yes I am 100% insulting you if you play sports games from EA)

The others like Bioware will probably either have their IPs sold to other studios or just straight up sold themselves. I don't see them trying to continue a failing studio. Bioware has had way too many failures to be a financially sound investment.

They'll probably keep the Star wars stuff so expect even worse garbage.

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u/pepperann Aug 05 '26

It's just as likely they'll shut down studios and hoard IPs, unfortunately. One fragility of capitalism is that there's more value in protecting market share, preserving existing value, and preventing a competitive entity from finding success in an IP when compared to the profit of a sale. You see this shit across every industry.

EA's buyout did technically stack ~$20b in debt, but PIF alone holds at least a trillion in assets. Since the corporation is now private it has no obligation to disclose financials to the public.

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u/Senn-66 Aug 05 '26

I see the complete opposite. They are going to do the standard PE thing when it acquires a company, squeeze all the short term profits out of it by selling anything that isn't nailed down and try to extract as much money as humanly possible out of what remains. This is why "PE buys X" can be so damaging to the long term health of a business, because the debt math of PE aquisitions just doesn't allow for long term strategies.