EA Set to Be Bought for $55 Billion – What does this mean for the future of the company, its studios, and its games?

Electronic Arts, better known as ‘EA’ and the publisher behind Star Wars: The Old Republic, has agreed a deal to sell Electronic Arts to an investor group for $55 billion, with the sale set for Q1 2027 (which for EA, will be April/May/June 2026.)

The news was first reported citing unnamed sources, and a few days later was confirmed in an official press statement from Electronic Arts.

Who is purchasing EA?

The group of buyers who are purchasing Electronic Arts include:

PIF – Public Investment Fund, which is the is the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia
Silver Lake – a large investment firm which has invested in the game engine Unity, in Airbnb, in Skype before it was sold back to Microsoft, and in Twitter before it was sold to X, among many other large investments
Affinity Partners – formed and owned by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law

Where is the money to buy EA coming from?

Of the $55 billion purchase price, these investors are borrowing $20 billion from the bank to help pay for the purchase. The rest will come from their own funds, including about 10% stocks that Saudi Arabia’s PIF already owned. That Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund already had such as large investment into EA’s stocks was not widely known until the acquisition deal was disclosed.

Who is making money from this sale?

For anyone who owns EA stock, including the company’s directors, officers, other senior staff, investment firms such as Vanguard and BlackRock, and individual shareholders, each share will be purchased for $210 (up from the previous price of about $172). This acquisition will buy out all outstanding shares and take the company private, meaning EA will no longer be publicly traded on the stock market.

The shareholders will have to vote on this acquisition, but in financial terms, it seems to be a big win for anyone who had previously invested in the company.

For example Andrew Wilson, the Chairman CEO of Electronic Arts, recently sold off 5,000 of his stocks on September 22, a few days before the news broke, at about $173 each, earning him $865,000. At the new price, with the announcement of the acquisition, he would have gotten over $1 million.

While we don’t know exactly how many stocks each “insider” individual has, here is one example. Laura Miele, President of EA Entertainment & Central Development, had 55,592 stocks as of early September 2025. These should be worth well over $11 million after the deal is completed.

Will the deal go through?

The deal also has to pass all required regulatory approvals, but due to Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, being the owner of the one of the investment firms, it seems unlikely that any hurdles will stop the acquisition with the current administration, especially as the Trump Organization very recently signed a deal to build a new commercial and housing development valued at over $1 billion in Saudi Arabia. This deal doesn’t involve the acquisition of one gaming company by another, like Microsoft buying Blizzard, so there also shouldn’t be any anti-compete concerns like other big gaming deals that have happened recently.

As for cultural or national security, this case may be similar to the recent executive orders related to Tiktok. U.S. lawmakers and regulators argued that TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, might be compelled by Chinese laws to share U.S. user data with the Chinese government, or that the algorithm might be manipulated under foreign influence, posing a risk to privacy, data protection, and possibly even propaganda or influence campaigns.

A few days before the EA announcement, President Donald Trump signed an executive order approving a proposed deal, a new joint-venture company will oversee TikTok’s U.S. business while ByteDance holds less than 20% of the stock – much like a joint venture is purchasing EA. Enterprise tech giant Oracle, Silver Lake and the United Arab Emirates Abu Dhabi-based MGX investment fund will be the main investors in TikTok’s U.S. business, controlling a roughly 45% stake in the entity. This recent deal, signed by the President himself, points towards the current administration’s close financial and political ties to the middle east.

How will these investors make money from EA?

While some of the initial purchase is coming from the investment companies’ own funds, they are also taking out a $20 billion loan to purchase EA, which will need to be paid back as quickly as possible, in order to reduce the interest paid on the loan. This is called a leveraged buyout, and can sometimes lead to ruin for the original purchased company, if the purchaser does not have a solid plan and luck on their side.

In a standard business deal, the buyer assumes that purchasing a company will make them more money than the cost of acquiring it.

Sometimes this is because they are willing to invest long-term and expect to earn more over time. Other times, it is because they believe the original company is ‘leaving money on the table’—for example, by being inefficient with their technology, staff, or distribution.

It could also be due to less tangible factors, such as the company’s brand or its goodwill with customers.

The buyer also might believe that by changing how the company is run, they can generate more profit than the company could on its own.

Is the main goal of the purchase to make money directly from EA?

Not all deals are so cut and dry – sometimes purchases are made for long-term political or strategic gains that aren’t directly financial, sometimes even working at a loss for a long time, but giving the buyer the ability to earn prestige or goodwill on the world stage.

A great example of this is the Abu Dhabi royal family buying the Manchester City Football Club (England soccer team) back in 2008. Although the club was not exactly doing great financially or when it came to winning games, The Abu Dhabi royal family purchased the club, and immediately started putting out big bids for high-profile players, but even with this huge investment, they still finished tenth. Three years later they reached the FA Cup finals, their first major final in over 30 years, and leading to more success, fame and wins down the road.

Over time, the club, purchased by the royal family, has spent over €2.6 billion since the original purchase, and in the first year, they only made 100 million in revenue. Since then, Manchester has become a household name for soccer fans – 694 million people watched the competition last season, and it’s impossible to talk about Manchester without talking about its acquisition and it spending, all directly tied to Abu Dhabi.

In 2014, these cultural ties to the city allowed them to broker a deal with the city of Manchester as the Abu Dhabi United Group, and in addition to the club, have now invested over $1 billion in property and higher education in Manchester – a deal that seems unlikely to have happened if they hadn’t first invested in Manchester’s beloved team at a high loss, nor would they have received the personal prestige of owning and saving such a beloved team.

While there’s no royal family directly purchasing EA, there are two high profile geopolitical groups attached to the purchase, in addition to Silver Lake, who has its hands in many, many investments across the globe, many of which have shaped parts of our culture, like Unity, Airbnb, and Twitter.

Saudi Arabia

The first group is Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is most well known for its oil, and has the largest oil reserves in the world, but they are aware their oil reserves will eventually run out, and have been working on a plan called Vision 2030, to diversify its economy. Purchasing EA is directly in line with their goals, one of which is “Grow the Public Investment Fund’s assets and role as a growth engine” and “develop the digital economy”.

Saudi government funds and hosted the first and second Esports World Cup. The tournament’s official partners included Sony and Amazon, and games played at the tournament included Fortnite, Call of Duty, and League of Legends. The event is part of Saudi Arabia’s “Vision 2030” economic diversification strategy, which has seen billions invested in various sports events. While there was a 70 million dollar prize pool for the 2025 Esports World Cup, it is unlikely that the event earned that much in sponsorships and ticket sales.

This isn’t even the first time Saudi Arabia has purchased gaming companies. Savvy Games Group, founded by the Public Investment Fund, is a video game investment, development, publishing and Esports company based in Saudi Arabia, which now owns Monopoly Go (popular moneitzed mobile game) and Pokemon Go. Saudi Arabia also invests in ownership of stocks, and while it fluctuates, PIF owned around 8.5% of Nintendo last year. They have also invested in Take-Two, (the owner of Rockstar / GTA and Zynga mobile gaming), Activision Blizzard (WoW, Diablo, Overwatch), Capcom (Monster Hunter and Resident Evil).

Remember how the Abu Dhabi royal family bought that soccer club back in 2008? Saudi Arabia’s PIF bought the Newcastle United Football Club in 2021 for over £300 million. This purchase, and their other similar investments, are part of a broader pattern of investing in prominent sports entities (both the kind with your feet and esports) to bolster the kingdom’s international profile. Saudia Arabia has become a hub for elite boxing, and the 2034 FIFA World Cup is set to take place there too.

Saudi Arabia has also branched out into growing their cultural reach beyond just sports, using their strong financial position to lure in companies, leagues and individuals who may not have otherwise have wanted to work with the country due to their previous involvements with various human rights issues, Saudi links to the hijackers during the 9/11 attacks, and the more recent assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was assassinated inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

After 9/11, public relations firms helped salvage Saudi Arabia’s image, and these types of cultural sponsorships through sports, esports, and even things like comedy specials helped whitewash the country and monarchal government actions, making the country more desirable to work with for the average person.

Saudi Arabia also flexed their financial influence during the recent Riyadh Comedy Festival, where they invited famous comedians to perform, including Dave Chappelle, Kevin Hart, Aziz Ansari, Pete Davidson, Andrew Schulz, Jo Koy, Bill Burr, Jessica Kirson, Jimmy Carr and Louis C.K. Tim Dillon on his podcast stated “So what, they have slaves?” and that he was offered $375,000, and stated “They’re paying me enough money to look the other way.” Tim was later fired from the festival after his commentary/jokes about slavery in Saudi Arabia. Allegedly other comedy stars were offered even more, and while $375,000 might be pocket change for big celebrities, the average annual average salary in the U.S. is $66,622, making the offer 5x the average US salary for a week of festival work, at what was being billed as the largest festival of its kind globally.

This financial offer would have to be high enough and well-worded enough to assuage any fears the comedians might have, especially as earlier in the summer, the Saudi Interior Ministry announced Turki al-Jasser’s execution, a blogger/journalist who covered sensitive topics such as women’s rights and the Palestinian cause. The Saudi authorities also found him to be the anonymous author behind a Twitter account linking members of the Saudi royal family to alleged acts of corruption and human rights abuses. His execution came after 7 years of imprisonment.

While none of the comedians offered a place in the festival were journalists who wrote exposes on the crimes of the royal family, some of them likely had in the past made satirical jokes about countries in the middle east, their cultural practices, and their human rights abuses. The offer to come perform at the festival did come with a list of restrictions of what the guests could talk about when it came to the royal family and its legal system – and the recent execution underscored these outlines.

Having these big-name celebrities attending such a public festival improves public perception of Saudi Arabia, showing that it is a ‘safe’ country and entity to work with and do business with, and the same goes for their investments in Sports and Esports, with the latter sometimes being called “sportwashing“, the act of using sports to improve their reputation.

Saudi Arabia also has in its Vision 2030 plan to generate 1.6 million tourism-related jobs by 2030, so improving its reputation is an important part of the Vision 2030 overall plan – and purchasing EA could be a part of this over-arching goal, in addition to being a more directly financial investment.

Affinity Partners

Affinity Partners is the second group in the deal that may want to invest in EA for reasons beyond a direct investment in the gaming company’s financial future.

Affinity Partners was formed by and is owned by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law (married to Ivanka), who also served as a senior advisor during Trump’s first presidency. The firm has a focus on investing in American and Israeli companies, and its sources of funding are overwhelmingly from the Saudi Arabian government. The largest investor by some margin is the Saudi government’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund… which is the same PIF group spoken about earlier. This firm is quite smaller, with its head Jared Kushner at the helm, and a team of 30+ professionals manging $5.4 billion total, with about 2 billion from PIF. So far, the firm has returned no profits to its investors, but seems to have invested in various technology and property based projects, with the EA deal being its biggest and most talked about deal.

“The House Oversight Committee said on June 2, 2022, that it had opened an investigation into whether Kushner had traded on his government position to get the deal. As of 2024, the fund had made $157 million in management fees (including $87 million from the Saudi government alone) since 2021. The fund [is? was?] under Senate investigation for possible foreign influence buying ahead of the 2024 election after a New York Times report suggested that Kushner used contacts he made from his role in Trump’s White House. According to Reuters, Kushner has also been in multiple discussions on U.S.–Saudi diplomacy since Trump left office, which in turn prompted questions as to whether and how his financial ties would influence U.S. foreign policy under a second Trump presidency.” (Wikipedia quote)

Data Collection – Either adapt or die

In addition to Affinity Partners and the Trump family’s close ties to Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia’s investments, the changing political landscape of the United States could potentially be connected to the purchase. Social media and online presence has become an incredibly important part of poltical efforts in recent elections, both presidential and smaller elections. A New York City representative recently spoke about his experience with the vigorous need to present online in ways that didn’t even exist a decade ago.

“You have to master what I call ‘the three threes.'” A 30-second vertical video, a three-minute cable news hit, and a three-hour filmed podcast interview.

These three very different types of formats are currently some of the strongest ways to sway hearts and minds in the United States – but who knows what formats might be used in the future, either directly or indirectly, to reach voters?

He went on to say, “You get good at it or you become extinct. I mean, that’s life, right? That’s evolution. Either adapt or die.”

Acquiring EA comes with a lot of indirect power, especially when it comes to shaping a narrative for future games, how they are presented, and who is promoted playing them. While it seems unlikely we’ll see anything as direct as “the next Battlefield game to have a main story plot be that Saudi Arabia is coming to the rescue of the United States and they need to band together against a common foe” as one Redit user commented tongue-in-cheek, its unclear what changes to the various franchises might come in the future.

Pokémon Go – Business As Usual

Historically, both Silver Lake and PIF have focused on making financially-minded changes (with Affinity Partner’s objectives yet to be seen). After PIF purchased Pokémon Go, director Michael Steranka said, “I would say the most remarkable thing about this transition so far is how uninterrupted it’s been,” he adds. “It’s very much been business as usual.”

While it may be business as usual for developers and players, more may be going on behind the scenes. Pokémon Go’s most interesting features includes its ability to detect where the user is, and use augmented reality to display digital Pokémon on top of what the user sees through the phone’s camera, as if the Pokémon was really there to catch, and the novel aspect of competing with players nearby and travelling to different locations in real life to catch different Pokémon had players out in droves exploring the world around them. This exploration lead to an immense amount of data being fed into the game’s databases.

Late last year, Niantic announced that it was using Pokémon Go to build an artificial intelligence model trained on more than 30 billion images collected from its apps, an AI-based system designed to improve AI understanding of the physical world, much like Google CAPTCHAS could help AI detect stoplights and crosswalks after users selected them when trying to log in to various sites. While most of the projects Niantic’s Spatial department have worked on seem pretty cool, like other video games and even models to enhance U.S. Coast Guard training, who knows what this geospatial database of many cities, created by the players photos from Pokemon Go, could be used for in the future?

This large collection of data is in addition to the more common user data, but much like other online games, goes far beyond just known your email address and your billing address. Most games, including many EA online games, include intensive tracking of user player statistics, play times and locational data – making easy to see where a specific player might live, when they are online at their computer or console, or when they are away. If playing on a portable device, like a phone, tablet, handheld PC or laptop, locational data might also show where you work, travel, or go to school. While not all games have the ability to chat or communicate directly with other players, most chats are logged, and the advanced in AI technology make them easier than ever to crawl through the thousands of conversations happening publicly or privately between players every day. This data, in addition to the more mundane data like your credit card number, should all get passed along with the purchase of the company, directly to the new owners – or at the very least, give them the permission to continue collecting it going forward.

This type of user data could be incredibly valuable in upcoming elections, especially as the current United States administration employed a unique tactic called Project Alamo starting in 2016. Project Alamo is the Republic party’s digital database and ad operation in 2016, using detailed voter data and social media ad targeting to reach different audiences, and that detailed gaming and location data could help segment out those audiences even more specifically. With Jared Kushner being the de facto campaign manager for Donald Trump’s 2016 election, access to the data from over approximately 700 million plus accounts could be incredibly useful if used for targeted advertising in future elections.

How might the deal being a leveraged buyout affect EA?

With at least two of the three investment companies involved in the deal potentially having larger-scope investment reasons, it is unclear what the exact plans for the investment will be.

Traditionally, leveraged buyouts (where the buyer has to borrow money to purchase the company), need to make money back fast

to pay off their debt, so they stop accruing interest on their large loan.

The company itself takes on the debt – in this case, EA in its new form will be saddled with 20 billion dollars it will need to pay back – even if it went bankrupt and couldn’t pay its debt, the investors would still be out the other 36 billion they invested, so it’s in their best interests to make money from the the purchase.

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Toys ‘R’ Us

Many players are concerned this purchase might be similar to some other high-profile leveraged buyout cases. One poignant example is the famous American toy store, Toys ‘R’ Us, a beloved location for young kids to visit, until the company’s lackluster sales lead to the company being put up for sale. It was purchased by an investment group, but the company continued to stagnate, and the leveraged buyout was unable to be paid back quickly, causing Toys ‘R’ Us to pay $425 million to $517 million in interest every year.

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This famous example has some key differences from the EA buyout though – 1) Toys ‘R’ Us wasn’t doing great to start with, and 2) unlike the EA deal, the majority of the Toys ‘R’ Us purchase was made with a loan… the investment firms only provided 20% of the $6.6 billion purchase price, while the other 80% was borrowed. In the EA case, only 36% was borrowed, with a whopping $36 billion put up by the investors, giving them much more to lose if they are unable to find profit within the company. In short, this was a small investment in an already failing company, with no one taking the helm in a way that could save it from bankruptcy.

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Red Lobster

Another notable case that has been compared to the EA deal is the demise of Red Lobster, a well known American seafood chain of restaurants famous for its endless shrimp promotions. The Red Lobster chain was sold to a firm for $2.1 billion in 2014, with goals to make the company leaner and more efficient. Before the sale, the firm identified that Red Lobster held something even more valuable than buttered up fish and lobsters – and that was the actual land below the Red Lobster restaurant locations. Over the years, Red Lobster had built itself up in prime locations, and to pay for the buyout, Red Lobster had to sell the land beneath the restaurants off for $1.5 billion, with some locations being sold outright, and others leasing the land under their restaurant instead of owning it.

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When commercial leases started going up, Red Lobster was highly exposed, and by 2023, rents totaled $200 million per year and was a factor in the 2024 bankruptcy filing. In the end, even with the cost- and staff-cutting measures, and a $575 million investment and partnership with a Thai shrimp company, the chains were unable to overcome the high rent costs. If rent had not grown so exponentially, and with expert leadership and restaurant knowledge at the helm of Red Lobster, it is possible that the investment firm would still be making money selling seafood dinners.

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When learning about this case online, I had only anecdotally heard that the private investment firm had “stripped Red Lobster of all their valuable assets.” I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, and assumed they had sold every pot, pan, dish, oven and building, which they thought might add up to more than they paid for the company, leading to only an empty lot being left behind of Red Lobster, a long tumble weed wandering across the empty parking lot.

This clearly wasn’t correct, but even simplifying the story to “they sold all of Red Lobster’s assets so the company died” wasn’t quite correct either.

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Hilton

While those are some high-profile cases that ended in tragedy (is there a Netflix special about them yet?) there are plenty of cases where a leveraged buyout lead to huge growth for the company.

A famous one is the Hilton hotel back in 2007 – Blackstone’s acquisition of Hilton, $20.5 billion, or about 78%, was financed through debt with the remaining $5.6 billion put up by the investment company. Once Hilton was purchased, Blackstone had a plan to make the hotel company operate more efficiently, and expand globally.

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The first big move was to relocate Hilton’s headquarters to Virginia to lower overhead costs. Next was to add over a thousand hotels to the hotel chain’s line, particularly in Europe and the Middle East. They upgraded the system for their hotels, adding mobile key entry and digital check-in. They also made a major shift from owning many building and properties, to instead creating franchise agreements and licensing their brands to other hotel owners in exchange for fees. They ended up not only prospering with their huge loan, but even weathering out the 2008 recession. By 2013, Hilton was estimated to be worth $33.6 billion, up form the 26 billion it was purchased at, and seems to have continued making billions over the years since.

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The Hilton deal seems to have worked where Red Lobster and Toys R Us failed by really knowing the state of the market, and by successfully implementing the changes that would lead to the company’s financial success, even if it meant drastically changing the way the company worked.

How might the deal change EA?

In the end, what will matter most for EA’s success will be who is at the helm making decisions, and how well they know the market and how wisely they change EA’s operations. What exactly that might look like has yet to be announced, and how this might affect individual games is also unknown. The ability for EA to turn a profit after this huge buyout may depend on some games being shut down, or others being bolstered, or even wilder things like smaller studios being brought into the EA fold and more new games being produced.

Some measure that might be taken could include:

Layoffs and outsourcing

Many tech companies have been reducing their headcount, and even EA has already cut their global staff by 5% in 2024 already. One of the major Vision 2030 goals, Saudi Arabia’s plan for the future, is to increase employment, so there is a potential even more staff may be outsourced. Like many AAA publisher, EA studios already outsources some Art production, QA testing, porting and development.

EA as a large corporation also has call centers, chat support, and email support that they offer for their games, and of course there’s all the background jobs in finance, payroll, IT support, and HR that could also potentially be streamlined or outsourced more. Advances in AI technology may even allow the new owners to replace these jobs, outsourced or otherwise, with AI models.

EA has already done some major work centralizing between its games, for example, the Star Wars: The Old Republic payment system and customer service are now fully under EA’s models, rather than being their own thing run by the studio through their website. These changes could also include selling physical space, by selling or downsizing physical office space – we’ve already seen that the Broadsword Star Wars: The Old Republic team has been working primarily remotely from home for years now, ever since COVID made it standard, and many other EA-adjacent teams may have as well.

Studio changes

Significant studio changes already took place in June 2023, where EA restructured the company, having EA Entertainment and EA Sports as two separate divisions.

Shortly after, we also some some studio shuffling, with Star Wars: The Old Republic development and staff being moved from Bioware to Broadsword, allowing Bioware to focus on their Mass Effect and Dragon Age project, and Broadsword to take on the online game, a task that it already was familiar with. We may see more changes like this, we may see other EA-owned studios combined or experience outsourcing, or we may see even more studios purchased and brought into the EA fold. We could perhaps see new sports games, or new Star Wars titles, or more sims expansions for sale.

More $$$ in games

EA already has a strong live service model when it comes to microtransactions, battle passes, and subscription content, especially in its major games like the EA Sports titles and even the SIMS with its expansion packs.

It is unclear how exactly this may change, as most of the online games currently already have this type of functionality, and have worked on improving their revenue through these models over the years already.

Star Wars: The Old Republic, for example, has moved away from a “loot crate” microtransaction model, and has been focusing more on direct-sales of cosmetic microtransaction items and has continued to tweak its subscription-based rewards and offerings over the years, in ways that the player base seems to have taken well overall as part of their revenue model.

Porting, mobile and console

While Microsoft-Blizzard’s foray into making a mobile Diablo game earned groans from gamers, the mobile Diablo Immortal game has earned more than $360 million in revenue.

With some impressive licenses and franchise under its belt, new games might be developed for mobile that take advantage of familiar mobile microtransaction models, but with new names and faces – while Sims and Apex for mobile already exists, there are a bunch of series that could potentially be profited off of by creating fully-fledged mobile spinoffs. Some of the Sports-based games do already have mobile versions, but not all have the amazing full functionality of the original games.

Other series that we could potentially see on mobile include…

Battlefield
Dragon Age
Mass Effect
Dead Space
Command & Conquer
Star Wars: The Old Republic (ok.. maybe not, but maybe we could finally see it release on console?)

Leveraging AI

In addition to using AI for operational needs, like support or other back office jobs, AI could potentially be used to more quickly create assets for games, or even be used to create new types of games all-together. These assets might include art, voice acting, code, 3D rigging, game stories, and more.

SAG-AFTRA Video Game Strike suspended at noon PT today. All SAG-AFTRA members are instructed to return to work on productions under the IMA, including work promoting or publicizing projects produced under the IMA. READ MORE: www.sagaftra.org/sag-aftra-vi…

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While US studios seem to have been slow to swap to using AI in favor of being able to continue to hire artists, writers and voice actors (see the year-long Voice Actor Strike), the investment firm may have much less interest in keeping those artistic expressions in favor of producing content more quickly.

Sentiment by players seem to be torn, at least for EA’s story based games, with some players welcoming the AI overlords in return for more content quicker, while others feel the loss of human voice actors would be a severe detriment to voice-acted games like Star Wars: The Old Republic, and future potential Mass Effect and Dragon Age games. At the moment, if studios want to work with big-name voice actors like Jennifer Hale, they have to follow Union rules and sign Union contracts, or risk losing their famous stars. But who knows what future decisions might be made, especially for any potential new projects that do not cast any existing union stars?

As of now, the private equity consortium acquiring EA has not publicly detailed specific areas where they believe EA is leaving money on the table, so all of these are guesses. For all we know, someone in the Suadi Arabia monarchy just really, really, really likes Madden.

Will the culture at EA change?

With such a large purchase, and so many potential changes in the future, there is no way for EA to remain exactly how it is right now.

Players do seem to be asking if the ideological values of the company will be changed, rather than changes simply being more mundane financial-based decisions like restructuring and increased monetization’s. This question comes mainly from the fact that a huge part of the purchase is literally by the Saudi Arabia government – an Islamic state with an absolute monarchy, which mandates observance of Sharia law.

“Since 2001, Saudi Arabia has engaged in internet censorship. Most censorship falls into two categories: one based on censoring “immorality” (mostly pornographic and LGBT-supportive sites along with sites promoting any religious ideology other than Sunni Islam) and one based on a blacklist run by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Media, which primarily censors sites critical of the regime or associated with parties that are opposed to or opposed by Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabian law does not recognize sexual orientations or religious freedom, and the public practice of non-Muslim religions is actively prohibited.”

By that censorship alone, many of the games and game websites being purchased by PIF would be banned in Saudi Arabia. Many of EA’s story-based games have a focus on the exploration of the identity of the characters in their stories, and represent a wide variety of ideologies, personalities and characteristics that do not follow Sunni Islamic values. EA itself has over multiple years invested in many programs like the Game Changer’s STEM program, supported Pride Month, and as recently as 2025 has been given a 100 score based on workforce protections, inclusive benefits, and internal training and inclusive culture.

In addition, many of the staff who work on these story-based games do not have the same values as the Saudi Arabia royal family, nor do many of the players. For example, the SIMS franchise is well known for catering especially towards women, who live a very different lifestyle than women in Saudi Arabia, who were not even allowed “to marry or live on their own” without a male guardian’s permission until 2021. Many of the story-based franchises have both characters and players who identify within the LGTBQ+ spectrum, either through their orientation or gender expression, something which is still either illegal or unrecognized in Saudi Arabia.

But how has being purchased by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund affected other gaming companies, who may have similar players, staff, and values?

Pokémon Go might be considered one of those types of companies, with at least some emphasis on being an inclusive game run by progressive leadership. IGN was able to ask the director about the changes while being run by a Saudi-backed company:

“We want people to go out and meet with other folks in their community and fully believe in the power of getting face to face and finding common ground and bettering the world from that type of community-first approach.”

“I don’t think there’s going to be any major or any changes at all that is dictated down on high, from [the parent company], and if anything it just means we have the funding needed to invest in areas that we’ve always wanted to invest in. And so that’s something I’ve really been excited about, because there is a world where maybe we became a public company, and then we’re at the scrutiny of shareholder demands on a quaterly basis. That’s not really a world we’re operating in within at [the new company], which is great. It can be a lot more focused on what’s best for the long term health of the game.”

Does Saudi Arabia have human rights issues?

Yes.

Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy in which all legislative, executive, and judicial power ultimately rests in the hands of the king, within an Islamic state with an absolute monarchy, which mandates observance of Sharia law. While changes have been made in the last decade towards reform of Women’s Rights, LGBT rights are still incredibly low, and the right to political dissent and religious freedoms deems to be almost non-existant. Saudi Arabia does seem to be taking some steps towards equality in the workplace as part of their Vision 2030 plan, and the new additions in 2025 are a significant step toward a more balanced and modern labor market, including “Employers are now prohibited from taking any actions that undermine equal opportunities or constitute discrimination based on gender, age, ethnicity, nationality, marital status or disability.”

One interesting point of note though, is that many players bring up the topic of human trafficking and slave labor in Saudi Arabia as a major point of concern. In 2021 an ongoing in 2025, Saudi Arabia was designated as only a Tier 2 country by the United States Department of State in its 2021 Trafficking in Persons Report, putting it in the same category as other countries like Italy and Iceland, as “countries whose governments do not fully comply with the TVPA’s minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards”.

Traditional slavery has been abolished in Saudi Arabia since 1962 (about 100 years after the United States). However, Saudi Arabia employs the kafala system, which is a type of sponsorship program where migrant workers require an in-country sponsor, usually their employer, who is responsible for their visa and legal status – meaning migrant workers could neither change employers nor leave the country without their employer’s permission. While some of these rules have been reformed, many workers are not covered under the changes, leaving workers vulnerable if they have unscrupulous employers. Even as recent as 2025, migrant domestics workers, often women, reported extreme overwork, severe restrictions on their freedom and privacy, or even more dire events like violence or sexual abuse.

It’s difficult for me to write about these things that paint Saudi Arabia in such a negative light without also thinking about the things going on in the country I currently live in, where EA is currently based and pays taxes to, and where one of the new owners Jared Kushner, has his father-in-law posted up as President.

Today, as I researched for this article, the current president of the country I live in said in a speech, thay “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military — National Guard, but military” and went on to say, “We’re under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms.”

It’s difficult to condemn Saudi Arabia’s strict censorship laws when the president of the country I live in makes a speech about having “signed an executive order to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances”.

It’s difficult to condemn Saudi Arabia for its terrible track record for LGBTQ+ citizens when just yesterday, the president of the country I live in stated on social media that “They are threatening to shut down the government of the United States unless they can have over $1 Trillion Dollars in new spending to continue free healthcare for Illegal Aliens (A monumental cost!), force Taxpayers to fund Transgender surgery for minors, have dead people on the Medicaid roles…”

In the end, regardless of who owns or invests in the company, very few gaming studios and publishers are completely free from these types of injustices – even before the purchase, Saudi Arabia had an almost 10% share in EA Games that many players were not aware of (including me!), owns Pokemon Go outright, has around 8% in Nintendo, around 3.5% in Take-Two/Rockstar, about 2% of Activision-Blizzard, and 5% in Capcom.

Even American-focused companies have been under fire for their involvement with human rights issues. The Israeli Ministry of Defense is Microsoft’s second largest military customer, and the Israeli military has utilized Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform and AI services during the Gaza war to identify targets, leading to even employees protesting Microsoft’s role in the Gaza war.

In 2020, Ubisoft faced widespread allegations of workplace harassment, sexual misconduct, and discrimination across multiple studios. Lawsuits in 2021 accused Blizzard of systemic sexual harassment and gender discrimination.

Even my beloved Neopets isn’t untainted – at one point it was run by Scientologists.

no ethical consumption under capitalism

In the end, there’s a nice saying that I think sums up my feelings – “no ethical consumption under capitalism” – it’s a saying that highlights that the capitalist system inherently involves exploitation and unethical practices, which makes perfect ethical consumption impossible for individuals.

I first came across this concept in a wonderful TV Show called The Good Place. In the show, in one of the scenarios, the characters are trying to change the way you get into ‘heaven’ (aka The Good Place), as it currently works on a points-based system, but the system seems very unfair to them. One of the characters tries to explain why in a very approachable way.

Michael: Life now is so complicated, it’s impossible for anyone to be good enough for the Good Place. I know you don’t like to learn too much about life on Earth, to remain impartial, but these days just buying a tomato at a grocery store means that you are unwittingly supporting toxic pesticides, exploiting labor, contributing to global warming… Humans think that they’re making one choice, but they’re actually making dozens of choices they don’t even know they’re making.

The Judge: Your big revelation is life is complicated? That’s not a revelation. That’s a divorced woman’s throw pillow. I mean, this guy chose this tomato. Those are the consequences. You don’t want the consequences? Do the research. Buy another tomato. What else you got?

Michael: Um… I’ll tell you what else I got, uh… I got this. (starts dancing badly)

I think about these kinds of things a lot. Even if you grow your own tomato, you may not even know where the fertilizer came from, or the seeds, or may be using more water than an efficient farmer, or… or… or…

It often feels like no matter how many good choices I make, they’re a drop in the bucket of the global ocean. I shop at thrift stores. I recycle. I compost. I eat less meat. I try to be anti-consumption. I try to be kind to others. But do those things even matter, if I’m also inadvertently supporting companies or countries that are supporting practices that are so horrifically monumental in scale compared to the little good I do when compost?

In the end, all of these large properties, franchise and IPs that we’ve grown up with and love will likely be owned by one company (or country?) or another that doesn’t necessarily align with the values we see in that piece of media, whether it’s a TV Show, a song, a book, or a video game. In the mean time, I’m going to keep on sharing knowledge and guides about my favorite games to help other players feel included, continue helping to connect people via the guides and the Guild Finder, encouraging players to be kind to each other, and hoping for the future. Well, at least until I’m offered a spot as a special guest at a festival in Saudi Arabia, I wonder if my price is $375,000, or higher?

Sources

I have sourced as much of my information from other journalistic sources the best I could. I am not a journalist or professional writer, an economist or analyst. I just like looking things up online.

Edits:

Thanks psikofunkster for pointing out Q1 2027 does not = January 2027! Fiscal year is different than normal year.
Red Lobster has closed many of its restaurants and entered bankruptcy, but a new investment group bought it in 2024.

Questions or comments? Feel free to send me a message on Twitter @swtorista, Reddit /u/swtorista, Youtube Swtorista channel or by e-mail at the same name with gmail.com at the end. Have fun out there and may the Force be with you. ~ Swtorista