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Not referencing the Saudi Arabia portion here specifically but LBOs as documented in the book Barbarians at the Gate (covers Nabisco/RJR tobacco) gives me basic
by byronic 1y ago
Not referencing the Saudi Arabia portion here specifically but LBOs as documented in the book Barbarians at the Gate (covers Nabisco/RJR tobacco) gives me basically zero hope for the future of EA. EA was already rabid cost-cutters and RIF specialists, and they won the most hated company award for however many consecutive years for a reason. Giving them crushing debt to go along with their propensity to give large executive bonuses and stomp their workforce is not a good recipe long-term
- ecshafer 1y agoEA won the most hated company award because video game players are dramatic. Charging $5 for a launch DLC is a drop in the bucket compared to the ways that some larger more critical companies can affect your life.
- vunderba 1y agoEA has been a target of scorn for a while because of a laundry list of issues (including pay-to-win schemes, loot boxes, treatment of employees, etc.) which is long enough to warrant its own dedicated wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Electronic_Arts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Electronic_Arts
- ecshafer 1y agoEA doing any amount of shenanigans isn't making people sick, killing people, making people homeless or destitute. Their crimes are minor and petty.
- LunaSea 1y agoSo I guess that no other matter can receive attention if some people are homeless in the world?
- msl 1y agoNot so, but if you're to pick one company over all the others as being the most deserving of your ire, EA seems like a rather strange choice compared to, say, Nestlé [1], Chiquita [2], The Coca-Cola Company [3] or Shell [4]. One might even wonder if there isn't something wrong with your priorities. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_of_Nestl%C3%A9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_of_Nestl%C3%A9 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiquita#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiquita#Criticism [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Coca-Cola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Coca-Cola [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_plc#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_plc#Controversies
- throaway5445454 1y agoWell that's all well and good, but the ignorant masses who called EA the most evil company did so for basically the same reasons that you'd critique those other companies. Big corporations that put out productions designed to do nothing but take money from (often poor) people at the expense of their health. To me, the constant criticism of gamers over the issue reads like shilling for that pathetic open letter EA put out in response. Classic deflection from a toxic entity.
- ummonk 1y agoAddictive gambling for kids is hardly minor and petty. Many children have spent thousands on EA Sports games.
- lupusreal 1y agoTBQH Valve/Steam is a major factor in this gambling in games scene but gamers love them. So I don't think this is the real reason gamers have a problem with EA.
- Ekaros 1y agoMy defence with Valve is that at least on their stuff you most of time get stored credit. With the rest it is same, but it is actually drown the drain.
- lupusreal 1y agoFor me, it's their support for linux and their easy return policy for games that don't end up working. Gaben could light an orphanage on fire and I'd forgive him.
- overfeed 1y agoWhich Valve game involves a pay-to-win mechanic that affects gameplay?
- lupusreal 1y agoI don't know about pay to win, but TF2 and CS:Go have had extensive gambling scenes from what I've heard.
- rightbyte 1y agoSo EA also does not help starving children.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- stackskipton 1y agoSure, their “crimes” are minor compared to RealPage raising rents on everyone but it wasn’t because gamers were dramatic. It was most hated because it was so in your face.
- gjsman-1000 1y ago[flagged]
- arcatech 1y agoYou are simplifying the arguments. In general, if you find yourself thinking a group of people are "just being dramatic" then you're probably missing context.
- anonymars 1y agoWhy edit rather than reply?
- anonymars 1y ago> blunt and poorly thought through instrument. And how would you describe, "completely breaking the ability to have a threaded discussion"?
- sleepybrett 1y agoAre people pointing out that trump is marching us into autocracy and fascism 'dramatic' or just paying attention. Any communities gripes are just 'drama' if you don't know what they are talking about.
- Sohcahtoa82 1y ago> Video game players are hilariously, pitiably dramatic. I'm a gamer and I 100% agree with you. The simple fact is, AAA game prices have been stuck at $60-70 for 30 years. Despite $60 in 1995 being worth ~$127 today, games are still $60. They haven't kept up with inflation. Games are relatively cheap while development costs for AAA are ridiculously high. A typical SNES game had 10-30 people working on it and would have it done in 1.5-3 years. AAA games will have typically 1,000-3,000 and could take 3-7 years, so we're talking 100-200 times the development cost. Now, compare the best-selling SNES games [0] to the overall best-selling games [1]. Modern AAA games barely reach 10x the unit sales as old SNES games. Margins are thinning. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Super_Nintendo_Entertainment_System_video_games#List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Super_Nin... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_gam...
- lupusreal 1y agoGamers will forgive anything if the games are good. But EA is nothing but a slop factory.
- lofaszvanitt 1y agoNah, EA's history is laden with terrible decisions, killing creative teams, neglecting good project's marketing and killing them in the process because they had another internal game in the same genre and the like. It's a fucking cesspit of a company. And they sit on a lot of good franchises and they literally do nothing with them.
- Yizahi 1y agoYou had any hope for them?
- qn9n 1y agoI was hoping the launch of early access skate. would be received poorly, it was due to the beloved franchise being made into a Fortnite-like money grabbing scheme, would cause them to run backwards and fix it releasing an actual skate series game with some live service features but a solid focus on the original franchise. However that hope is dwindling.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ARandumGuy 1y agoAre there any examples where a company was purchased via a leveraged buyout and the company went on to be more profitable afterwards? Because the only examples I know of resulted in the purchased company going bankrupt fairly quickly.
- deanc 1y agoMany sports teams come to mind. Pretty much any F1 team that exists is now worth a lot more on paper than it was purchased for. A few EPL teams come to mind too.
- tanjtanjtanj 1y agoThose are just buyouts not leveraged buyouts. No EPL team was purchased with an LBO as far as I know.
- nereye 1y ago[1] “ The Glazer family’s acquisition of Manchester United remains controversial to this day. Their £790m takeover in the summer of 2005 came by way of a leveraged buyout: when a significant amount of borrowed money is used to fund the acquisition of a company, with the debt secured against that company itself.” 1 - https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/manchester-united-glazers-debt-explained-b2145746.html https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/manchester-unit...
- jonas21 1y agoHeinz, Hilton, Dell.
- choilive 1y agoDell did pretty well after going private
- ReptileMan 1y agoBut its buyout was lead by Michael Dell.
- mnky9800n 1y agoDid you see the HBO movie version of Barbarians at the Gate? I thought it was pretty interesting. You can watch it all on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS4ENJCIYNM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS4ENJCIYNM
- mrcwinn 1y agoThis is a fantastic movie that was lost to time!
- deepfriedbits 1y agoLoved the movie (and the book). The movie is highly entertaining for a business movie.
- vkou 1y agoDoes EA 202X stomp their workforce? I had a vague idea that this was largely a thing of the past. The wiki article linked cites a lot of abuse, but all of it is nearly 2 decades old. My understanding was that it course corrected, and is one of the better gaming firms to work for ATM.
- byronic 1y agoJason Schreier (sp?) is probably the journalist with the best track record on covering EA and it’s generally been rotten all the way down. His recent book Play Nice focuses on just Blizzard but I wouldn’t be surprised if he does one on EA someday because they are in a league of their own when it comes to toxic workplace practices
- vkou 1y agoFrom a cursory search, he dunks on mismanagement in EA fairly regularly, but I'm not finding a lot of evidence of him reporting on worker abuse. (Layoffs in a failing sub-studio are shitty, but aren't that. Vision whiplash is shitty, but is also not that. Management mandates to implement features that you know will tank your game are shitty, but are also not that.) Maybe it's pay walled. Do you have a source?
- byronic 1y agoI'll defer to people who claim to work there now (avanderveen in the other replies). If you want my perspective, your parenthetical is describing worker abuse. Severance-avoidant layoffs and crunch are shitty and _are_ worker abuse -- in my opinion.
- avanderveen 1y agoIn my experience at Maxis (2021-2024), EA 202X was quite a nice place to work
- Tiktaalik 1y agoI do not have first hand experience, but my impression from being in the industry is that modern EA is not at all like the "EA spouse" era.
- estimator7292 1y agoIt would be fantastic if EA went away. They've been such a blight on the entire industry, killed off or destroyed so many good franchises, developers, and studios.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]