The deal has gone through: EA has been purchased by the consortium of the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners. But in essence, EA is now owned by Saudi Arabia as the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund accounts for 93.4% of the ownership.
The deal has been controversial since it was announced last year. Saudi Arabia is already controversial on its own for a vast variety of reasons, and its investments are often seen as an attempt to cover up its many alleged human rights violations. The country has been gradually getting more involved with gaming, too, including having stakes in Take-Two and owning SNK. This raises question regarding how Saudi Arabia might influence game development in the future, although to the best of my very limited knowledge they’ve generally not bothered trying to impose their moral stances on the foreign companies they’ve invested in.
Then there’s the fact that Donald Trumps’ son-in-law Jared Kushner owns Affinity Partners, potentially influencing any decision to allow the deal to go through.
And if that wasn’t enough, around $20 billion dollars of this insane $55 billion dollars deal was leveraged, meaning EA has now become a private company with a MASSIVE debt.
Speaking of which, Jason Schreier of Bloomberg chimed on in Bluesky to say that layoffs are expected as EA has told investors that it intends on cutting around $700 million dollars per year. This will apparently include $170 million in “organizational efficiencies,”. That certainly seems like a PR way of saying layoffs.
EA’s annual Ebitda is around $1.5 billion, which should be enough to service the interest payments. But the publisher has told debt investors that it will cut $700 million in annual costs including $170 million in “organizational efficiencies,” per Bloomberg. In other words: mass layoffs
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier.bsky.social) 2026-08-05T00:34:00.106Z
Currently, EA brings in around $1.5 billion per year. That’s not profit, mind you. Even if it could somehow take all of that and put it toward repaying their new debt, it would still take around 13.3 years to pay it off. Which really makes me feel a bit better about my small amount of credit card debit.
And EA has already provided a worrying preview of what those “organizational efficiencies” might look like. Earlier this year, an undisclosed number of developers were laid off across all four studios behind Battlefield 6: DICE, Criterion, Ripple Effect and Motive. EA described the cuts as a “realignment,” despite Battlefield 6 selling more than seven million copies in three days and enjoying the biggest launch in the series’ history. Apparently, even making one of EA’s biggest hits isn’t enough to make your job safe.