By Johanna Weststar, Western University; Louis-Etienne Dubois, Toronto Metropolitan University, and Sean Gouglas, University of Alberta
Electronic Arts (EA) is one of the world’s largest gaming companies. It has agreed to be acquired for US$55 billion in the second largest buyout in the industry’s history.
Under the terms, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund (a state-owned investment fund), along with private equity firms Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, will pay EA shareholders US$210 per share.
EA is known for making popular gaming titles such as such as Madden NFL, The Sims and Mass Effect. The deal, US$20 billion of which is debt-financed, will take the company private.
The acquisition reinforces consolidation trends across the creative sector, mirroring similar deals in music, film and television. Creative and cultural industries have a “tendency for bigness,” and this is certainly a big deal.
It marks a continuation of large game companies being consumed by even larger players, such as Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision/Blizzard in 2023.
Bad news for workers
There is growing consensus that this acquisition is likely to be bad news for game workers, who have already seen tens of thousands of layoffs in recent years.
This leveraged buyout will result in restructuring at EA-owned studios. It adds massive debt that will need servicing. That will likely mean cancelled titles, closed studios and lost jobs.
In their book Private Equity at Work: When Wall Street Manages Main Street, researchers Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt point to the “moral hazard” created when equity partners saddle portfolio companies with debt but carry little direct financial risk themselves.
The Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) is looking to increase its holdings in lucrative sectors of the game industry as part of its diversification strategy. However, private equity firms subscribe to a “buy to sell” model, focusing on making significant returns in the short term.
Appelbaum notes that restructuring opportunities are more limited when larger, successful companies — like EA — are acquired. In such cases, she says, “financial engineering is more common,” often resulting in “layoffs or downsizing to increase cash flow and service debt.”
Financial engineering combines techniques from applied mathematics, computer science and economic theory to create new and complex financial tools. The failed risk management of these tools has been implicated in financial scandals and market crashes.
Financialization and the fissured workplace
The financialization of the game industry is a problem. Financialization refers to a set of changes in corporate ownership and governance — including the deregulation of financial markets — that have increased the influence of financial companies and investors.
It has produced economies where a considerable share of profits comes from financial transactions rather than the production and provision of goods and services.
It creates what American management professor David Weil calls a “fissured workplace” where ownership models are multi-layered and complex.
It gives financial players an influential seat at the corporate decision-making table and directs managerial attention toward investment returns while transferring the risks of failure to the portfolio company.
As a result, game titles, jobs and studios can be easily shed when financial companies restructure to increase dividends, leaving workers with little access to these financial players as accountable employers.
Chasing incentives and cutting costs
The Saudi PIF has stated a goal of creating 1.8 million “direct and indirect jobs” to stimulate the Saudi economy. But capital is mobile, and game companies will likely follow jurisdictions that have lower wages, fewer labour protections and significant tax incentives.
Some Canadian governments are working to keep studios and creative jobs closer to home. British Columbia recently increased its interactive media tax credit to 25 per cent.
The move was welcomed by the chief operations officer of EA Vancouver, who said “B.C.’s continued commitment to the interactive digital media sector…through enhancements to the … tax credit … reflects the province’s recognition of the industry’s value and enables companies like ours to continue contributing to B.C.’s creative and innovative economy.”
This may buffer Vancouver’s flagship EA Sports studio, but those making less lucrative games or in regions without financial subsidies will be more at risk of closure, relocation or sale. Alberta-based Bioware — developer of games including Dragon Age and Mass Effect — could be at risk.
Other ways of aggressively cutting costs might come in the form of increased AI use. EA was called out in 2023 for saying AI regulation could negatively impact its business. Yet creative stagnation and cutting corners through AI will negatively impact the number of jobs, the quality of jobs and the quality of games. That could be a larger threat to EA’s business and reinforce a negative direction for the industry.
Game players have low tolerance for quality shifts and predatory monetization strategies. Research shows that gamers see acquisitions negatively: development takes longer, innovation is curtailed and creativity is stymied.
Consolidation among industry giants may cause players to lose faith in EA’s product — and games in general, given the many other entertainment options that are available.
Creative control and worker power at risk
Some have raised concerns that the acquisition could affect EA’s creative direction and editorial decisions, potentially leading to increased content restrictions.
While it’s still unclear how the deal will influence EA’s output, experiences in other industries might be a sign of things to come. For instance, comedians reportedly censored themselves to perform in Saudi Arabia.
The acquisition may also have a chilling effect on the workers’ unionization movement. Currently, no EA studios in Canada are unionized. Outsourced quality assurance workers at the EA-owned BioWare Studio in Edmonton successfully certified a union in 2022, but were subsequently laid off. Fears of outsourcing, layoffs and restructuring could discourage future organizing efforts.
On the other hand, the knowledge that large financial players are making massive profits could galvanize workers, especially considering that before the buyout, EA CEO Andrew Wilson was paid about 264 times the salary of the median EA employee.
The deal certainly does nothing to bring stability to an already volatile industry. Regardless of any cash injection, EA remains very exposed.
About the Authors:
Johanna Weststar, Associate Professor of Labour and Employment Relations, DAN Department of Management & Organizational Studies, Western University; Louis-Etienne Dubois, Associate Professor, School of Creative Industries, The Creative School, Toronto Metropolitan University, and Sean Gouglas, Professor, Digital Humanities, University of Alberta
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
