EA staff fear new Saudi Arabia owners will police their games: "Projects just won't get signed because they don't align explicitly with what the Saudi government wants"
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EA staff fear new Saudi Arabia owners will police their games: "Projects just won't get signed because they don't align explicitly with what the Saudi government wants"
"It's certainly hard to feel good about being bought out by a regime that's very much at odds with progressive society"
Surely, they’ll approve a 9/11 flight simulator.
With a bonus level of chopping up journalists in hotel rooms?
To be honest that a great idea for a game and it will be a hit in no time.
Could you explain what you mean?
Mostly Saudi citizens were the perpetrators of 9/11 and there was a lot of suspicion that the government was involved, either through planning or funding.
Ah thanks, I wasn’t aware that the Saudi Government was involved
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axios.com/…/911-families-lawsuit-links-saudi-offi…
nytimes.com/…/evidence-of-financial-links-between…
vanityfair.com/…/declassified-report-saudi-ties-s…
jamal khashoggi
PRINCE bonesaw.
They aren’t concerned about being owned by Trump’s family too?
They own the Trump’s, not the other way around
EA owns the Trumps?
I’m going to get downvoted to oblivion, I’m fully aware.
There are many things I don’t know anything about. But I do know a fair bit about this area.
And with great respect to the worriers, this just will not happen.
The investment team that’s bought EA have many other “western” investments they’ve never interfered with, even though they do a great deal of things that the orthodoxy in Saudi Arabia would disagree with. The layers between “what I [claim] to believe” and “make me the most amount of money” are many and includes people from all over the world. If anyone thinks Saudi royalty will sit and make determinations about what games EA will ship they can stop worrying right now. The Saudi monarchy is worrying about two things only: As much money as possible and staying in power.
This is an investments like so many others. It will be ordered to profit-maximise - and if that requires one-upping Doom in gore, and shipping a new edition of Gay Paradise 2000 every 6 months - they will do exactly that.
This is a complete storm in a tea cup.
The Saudi monarchy hates Islam and is shackled by it. Saudi Arabia had been on a “liberalization” plan under MBS, and it’ll be western soon enough.
They’re following UAE’s doorsteps, and they’re even worse. You can now buy alcohol in public in UAE. You need a license (pay money and don’t be Muslim) or be a tourist, but it’s otherwise unrestricted. You can already wear almost nothing and you can literally be a Zionist who calls Muslims snakes and terrorist and you’ll be welcomed on a red carpet.
Saudi wants that, they just don’t have control tight enough over their population to get away with that yet.
So yes, they will not enforce Sharia on EA games, they’re hoping one day they don’t have to do any "moral’ restrictions on content domestically. As long as it brings in money.
Yeah the Saudi elites are hedonists behind closed doors. The monarchy needs to have the blessing from the clergy to stay in power so they need to be pious in public. Like it’s a open secret that the Saudi elite men fuck western prostitutes on the regular on their yachts in international waters.
You did say two contradictory things here. You said they won’t interfere, but also the only thing they care about is staying in power. This isn’t exclusive to them, but they will use it to maintain their power if it’s useful for that. If a game was going to be critical of them, it probably won’t be made. (It probably wouldn’t have been anyway, because the only thing that could come from it, for the former owners, is losing investments.) Yeah, they don’t care about Islam. That’s fair game, but they aren’t.
The bigger threat is that they have no idea how to run a game company. EA was already hated for the various things they were doing to try to squeeze more of a profit out of gamers. Have a private equity company run it and that’s only going to get worse.
Bosses cashed out and left the carcas to rot
The ironic part is it’s the same thing that happened to all the companies EA bought too
I doubt they can make EA any worse.
Ah ye of little faith. Rest assured, it can always get worse, as we will soon learn.
It is so funny to me that the Saudis would invest into a creative industry that thrives on letting artists make what they think is right and then forbid them from doing that. And also expect that industry to then operate profitably, even though they just removed the basic foundation of that industry.
But there is no talking and arguing with people like that, so we can just get popcorn, watch and enjoy the Schadenfreude.
My take is that the Saudis were incredibly fortunate to be sitting on a resource that has had inelastic demand for decades. So fortunate in fact that they didn’t get good at anything else that wasn’t related to oil.
They’ve known for some time that the oil reserves can’t sustain them forever so they’ve dabbled in investments in various industries with lacklustre results.
Their recent foray into gaming is symbolic of this. An industry that bleeds cash without the creative talent that underpins it. I mean Microsoft is a good example of when ‘business’ intersects with the production of art.
Assholes like this have zero, ZERO, concept of why creative work is popular. Even “corporate created” work. On an extreme end, as far as they are concerned they could turn The SIMS into “Saudi Life Simulator” and people will still buy it because “Its The SIMS.”
They don’t see the creativity or the why, they just see “popular brand”.
There are plenty of other examples of this out there.
Imagine buying an EA game. Smooth brains only.
I’ve had a personal EA boycott going for over 10 year snow. One of the best decisions I’ve made and I’ve never regretted it once.
The only time I “regretted” it was when I bought KOTOR 1 off steam, then I saw the EA credits and I used the refund policy to say “I bought this against my boycott and I didn’t know EA was involved”.
I got my money back.
Yeah sure buddy What s the average playtime of a Kotor run ?
In order to see the EA logo? Maybe 10 seconds?
Yeah could be. I thought he sas talking about end credit. Anyway that story doesn’t make any sens cause on steam u can hide publisher and if not u see clearly who’s it is before buying. So the whole story my boycott is so important steam refunded me doesn’t make sens either way
Never been a big EA fan. … only titles I’ve played is the first couple need for speeds. Battlefield, dead space and NCAA football. Before it was discontinued I’d buy it almost every year.
I purchased the first year it came back but haven’t purchased one since.
If I was an EA employee my biggest fear would be to be cut up into tiny pieces for disagreeing with the boss. Like jamal khashoggi
This will 100% happen. Hell, I couldn’t even leave a critical google review of a nearby middle eastern hotel because of government censorship.
Google suppression is the more prolific cause of censorship, not the least in criticisms of large firms.
They are in effect running a protection racket. If a company pays them to not show search results, they won’t show them. Ie, best buy’s now since 2021 defective electronics. The only hits on social media that are even close to what you are asking for, are forums run by the manufacturers that sold you the defective merchandise.
There is no bottom to this path we are on.
That’s not how it works. You can’t pay Google to suppress links. You can only file DMCA take downs iirc. Please send me the link where I can go pay Google to remove information. I’ll wait.
YOU can’t. I imagine large corpos have a better portal than you or I.
I’ve worked for large corporations. This doesn’t exist. It’s 100% misinformation
As if you would know, that you think they would let you in on that part of the business destroys your credibility in truth.
You are either quite mistaken and not able to see through bullshit, or covering for them. I suspect the former but idk it’s 2026 and mechanized influence ops are everywhere, including fully autonomous ones.
Still waiting on any proof other than “because I said so”.
Google removes billions of links yearly, these are through government laws, court rulings and DMCA. They maintain a transparency list of these removals. You don’t need to bribe Google, simply have your lawyers figure out a way to have it legally removed.
I have an exciting investment opportunity for you! Because you are so naive, I figured I would explain the joke as you clearly would not get it on your own judging by your comments on this thread.
Tell it to someone that doesn’t know that you have 0 credibility.
Still waiting
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Imagine a game like Lara Croft, but the main character wears a Burqua.
She wouldn’t be allowed to be the main character!
You don’t have to imagine.
It already happened.
en.wikipedia.org/…/Unearthed:_Trail_of_Ibn_Battut…
The Steam Reviews are amusing. Like one positive review is like “Oh, and there is a secret Zombie Survival mode!”
And a negative review is all “There is a lame pointless Zombie Survival Mode.”
she wears a hijab not a burqua.
Now I’m not an expert in Islamic fashion, but I’m pretty sure she doesn’t wear a burqa. She wears a hijab. They are different.
What game is it that they’ve got in mind that is likely to be killed off? If we were talking about the EA of old then sure they would have had a point but the new corporate EA that’s been around for the last two decades doesn’t have anything that could be considered controversial.
The Sims has gay people in it. Saudi Arabia really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really doesn’t like gay people.
Oh we’re gonna see same sex relation censor patches soon for sure.
Weird. I think they like them a lot more than they let on (sandy sexy secrets).
Women being allowed to be in public without a male guardian is controversial in Saudi Arabia, dude. It’s not going to take much.
Which EA game is that again?
Outside ™
Excellent graphics but boring story.
Yeah that’s right, you can’t think of any actual game can you. They don’t make anything anymore except sports games and infinite Sims expansion packs.
Maybe the next Sims won’t fuck anymore? Or the women won’t get to be as extravagant as in previous versions ?
Saudi killing off EA’s cash cow because of Sharia would be pretty funny.
Just imagine the sharia mod of the Sims… heads be rolling…
The female sims will have a fulfilling existence, just limited to the confines of their home and subject to their husband’s authority. /s
Let’s hope we can flog them if they don’t obey as well then :) And cut a bunch of hands when catching something stealing some bread out of the bin. And beheadings all those dudes looking vaguely gay or too secular.
Just like the good ol’ days in the Bronze Age.
The gay Sims are going to have a really bad time when the public beheading update comes.
But that’s a good thing, because it will go down in flames the way most of us have wanted to see for over a decade.
EA is loaded with so much debt I doubt it will even matter. They‘ll be dismantled.
That’s how the whole AAA level of the games industry already works: the people at the top greenlight what they want to greenlight.
It’s just adding a new layer to the mix when the people at the top are literally the royal family of an oppressive monarchy with openly fucked human rights practices.
(looks at the current CEO’s of most the big companies.)
I mean, I get where you’re going… but it’s assholes all the way up.
You’re not wrong, but I feel like there are subtle levels to these things.
If I start up a game and a logo comes up for Namco or Square Enix or whatever, most of them don’t make me think, “oh, I remember that time their owners assassinated a journalist, it made the international news, and they fully got away with it anyway.” That’s no longer the case for an EA logo.
Just keep re-releasing sport games every year with updated lineups like you’ve been doing and you’ll be fine.
They’ll just make a new Call of Duty series where you defend Aramco oil assets from terrorist invaders.
um sweaty it’s called battlefield, CoD is owned by Activison which is run by the Epstein affilicated people like Bobby Kotick , and not the journalist murdering saudis.
www.gamespot.com/articles/…/1100-6537858/
en.wikipedia.org/…/Assassination_of_Jamal_Khashog…
Time to work for someone else…
I’ve been worried, especially for the Sims, The Sims has been an LGBT Friendly game series since the beginning. Saudi Arabia is not very LGBT Friendly.
The Sims played a great part in helping me accept myself. it’d be a shame if they strayed from those values.
There’s Paralives now as an alternative
Lol Lmao even
Isn’t EA the company recently making headlines for being a power and money-hungry greed machine pushing the inshittification of the digital world and subscription-based life?
Gosh it sucks when someone with more leverage institutes unreasonable and unprecedented restrictions and demands, huh? The narcissism mind-virus is insane.
Recently? The last like 7 generations of “sport-year” games are all the same game.
Surprised Pikachu!
tuff shit. Next time try to make game ppl wanna play. kinda incredible how the last great/ inovative game from ea was fucking bf1 tiresome to have dev play the gamer are mean and need to be educated and then do a 180 being like im affraid for my job.
Sounds like an EA problem to me.
Having not playing an EA game in over 2 decades because they are a shitty company with shitty practices that make shitty games, fuck 'em.
Let’s hope they get what they deserve.
Open market is great, this is what we want - money rules all
Maybe, but I don’t think the Saudi rulers are lead particularly by belief. That’s just some physical world nonsense to keep the plebs in check.
What leads them is money, and the fear that all that oil money they’ve relied on for the last 100 years or so is going to run out at some point.
That’s why games like It Takes Two and Mass Effect will be culled. That’s why it’ll be wall-to-wall live-service war-slop and sports-slop until the day everyone with even a hint of creativity quits, and then it carries on anyway in a shambling AI form. And people will still lap it up.
Noshit
Quit all at once and start your own company.
Could you imagine? Having art and media freedom hindered by the bigoted, imperialistic values of an authoritarian regime?
Anyway, hope this doesn’t effect the Battlefield series. 😔
Projects won’t get signed unless they project a 10000% ROI
Remember that they paid 53 bil plus a huge loan that ea itself will have to pay, for something that has a 300 mil yearly profit
Basically ea FC (or what’s the name now?) will become a gambling machine to hook some whales
Then find a new job??? If they’re allegedly so morally opposed to their new bosses then why the fuck do they still work there? Let EA rot, jump on board a new studio.
It’s not like the job market is good at the moment.
Just finding a job isnt an easy task currently
Because apparently nobody has values anymore.
Woaw, never coulda seen that coming.
EA? This company most people boycott now? Color me surprised…
I’ve been boycotting EA for decades now, but I always felt like I was the only one when I talked to people outside of specific circles. Have people grown their spines or has their quality dropped enough that no one wants their shit anymore?
Guess You were part of a tiny minority that slowly became a less tiny minority. But hey, I’m optimistic that it might help kill their reputation and sales. But…
I would be surprised if EA can make anything at all after any of its current projects. They need to make more money in profits than they currently make in revenue to survive.
My wife is glad Paralives is out so she can ignore The Sims.
Its way better and more inclusive.
well duh
so quit
in other news: water is wet.
but i haven’t bought an ea game since battlefield 3. so sounts like a them problem…
LOL
they will never revive CNC, especially generals which has the GLA.
Honestly, I expected rapid enshittification when Scopely bought Pokemon Go, but it’s been better than when Niantic owned it
Tbf “better than Niantic” is a bar so low it’s a tripping hazard in hell.
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EA has employees?
Compared to taking orders from Sweet Baby Inc of course
🤦 “bad slave, the truth makes me look bad”
Finally, we get a Gran Turismo of camel racing!
No you’ll get a version of Gran Turismo with sand duning and loads of Aramco banners everywhere.
GOAT simulator but (butt),well,— you know…
On the plus side, you don’t have to m----r the goats to get your money back.
Isn’t what woke does?
Doesn’t woke defend Islam?
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