Intro

EA appears to be on the verge of a massive deal to go private after a long time of being publicly traded. Reportedly, the deal involves a $50 billion buyout, which is highly likely to be detrimental for the company and its customers.

Who is behind the $50 billion EA deal?

Considering $50 billion is a sizeable lump of dough, there are multiple players swooping in together in order to minimize the financial risk for each of them.

One such company is Silver Lake, which has investments in high profile companies such as Skype, Unity, Airbnb and Twitter (now X). Needless to say, some of the investments were less successful than others.

Affinity Partners, the company led by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, is another investment firm involved in the deal, according to Reuters‘ sources.

What going private means for EA

Electronic Arts is already notorious for various schemes that angered their customers over the past few decades, which many attributed to the company being publicly traded and therefore attempting to appease shareholders.

One can expect this to get worse if the deal goes through.

According to the reports, a leveraged buyout is the way this deal is meant to go. This essentially means the investors take a huge loan to buy EA and then dump the burden of debt on the company.

As such, one can expect EA to double down on monetization schemes, which translates to its customers having an even worse time than before.