The US$55 billion (~RM231 billion) acquisition of Electronic Arts (EA) by the Saudi-backed Public Investment Fund (PIF) has, unsurprisingly, stoked many fires underneath the gaming community, even to the point that one of its own studios expressed concerns about its future. Recently, there’s been further pushback, this time from the US-based United Videogame Workers-CWA union.
The union put out a statement, calling for regulators and lawmakers to basically hold EA accountable, and ensure that they preserve jobs and creative freedoms.
“EA is not a struggling company. With annual revenues reaching $7.5 billion and $1 billion in profit each year, EA is one of the largest video game developers and publishers in the world. EA’s success has been entirely driven by tens of thousands of EA workers whose creativity, skill, and innovation made EA worth buying in the first place. Yet we, the very people who will be jeopardised as a result of this deal, were not represented at all when this buyout was negotiated or discussed.”
EA’s sale to the Saudi PIF marks the second-largest acquisition in video game history, the largest being Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard in 2022. Microsoft paid US$68.7 billion (~RM290 billion) for the studio and all its IP, including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Diablo.
“If jobs are lost or studios are closed due to this deal, that would be a choice, not a necessity, made to pad investors’ pockets—not to strengthen the company. The value of video games is in their workers. As a unified voice, we, the members of the industry-wide video game workers’ union UVW-CWA, are standing together and refusing to let corporate greed decide the future of our industry.”
