• As someone who had waning hope, down to only a trivkle now, of a new (decent) mass effect or dragon age game… Well, it’s done now.

    • Let’s be honest, that ship has sailed, years ago. At least now there’s closure

      Although indie tools are getting better and better, a spiritual successor is very nice possible

    • 18 days

      ME? Why? They showed you the level of dogshit they’ll make.

      There are only three ME games: the trilogy.

  • 18 days

    Seems like private game studios are generally better, but who am I kidding, this is EA we are talking about.

    • Yeah, normally I would celebrate this sort of decision, if it wasn’t for:

      1. EA
      2. Saudi investors
      3. $55bn
        • 18 days

          These buyouts usually end up being done by dropping the buyout amount into the company as debt. So EA now has $55B in debt to pay off. Time for more layoffs!

          This is exactly why Microsoft has been laying people off left and right. They went on a spending spree to buy studios, including $75B for Activision Blizzard, and within like two years started closing studios because they had a giant debt on paper

          • Yep… Truly insane that it’s legal to make a company pay for itself like that. It’s a recipe for anti-competitive practice sauce a main course of destruction of wealth creating capabilities

          • I’m gonna need you to explain how the Saudis paying the shareholders of EA creates an equal sized debt the company (now the Saudis) has to repay

            • 16 days

              I haven’t looked into the specifics of this buyout, but how they usually work is that the company doing the buyout uses a mix of cash on hand and loans from banks (aka debt) to make the purchase. They use the combined pool of money to pay buy the stock from the shareholders and then when they have a controlling stake in the company, they can tell the company “You owe us the amount of debt we just took to buy you,” and since they control the board of the company they can “accept the terms” they’ve just set for themselves.

              This is the exact playbook private equity uses to buy middlingly successful companies and just sell off everything for parts to get a return on their investment.

    • My guess is they’re going to throw out everything that isn’t Battlefield, the Sims, or their sports cash cows. Those are their money makers and they can focus on just recycling them every year and print money. Low effort, maximum profit, just like their other industry, oil.

  • 13 days

    Would Steam approve Journalist Beheading Simulator, or will they need to make their own store app to sell it?