this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2025
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EA's new owners are making "a huge bet" on generative AI cost-cutting to help repay a $20 billion loan, claims report (www.rockpapershotgun.com)
submitted 1 day ago by bytesonbike@discuss.online to c/games@sh.itjust.works
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The buyers are committing $36 billion of their own equity (briefly and inexpertly, "equity" is the value of your assets after you deduct anything you owe), including the value of the PIF's existing investments in EA. They're making up the rest of the total thanks to a $20 billion loan from JPMorgan Chase Bank. How will they manage that massive debt? According to the Financial Times, who cite unnamed insiders, they're gambling on the deployment of generative AI tools as a gigantic cost-saving measure.

"The investors are betting that AI-based cost cuts will significantly boost EA's profits in the coming years, people involved in the transaction told the Financial Times," the paper wrote (paywall) in their own coverage of the story. The FT elsewhere commented that the acquisition "is a huge bet that artificial intelligence can significantly cut EA's operating costs, allowing the equity consortium to manage a large debt load on a company that historically carried limited net debt."

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[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 10 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

A lot of what this means is a pivot to the highest yield games. So... more GACHA and other lootbox style gaming. Cheaper assets, more redundancy in levels, shorter and cheaper cut scenes, etc.

But this is normal operating procedure in a bust-out style business model. EA's going to be boiled down and stripped just like so many prior studios, from THQ to Bioware.

[–] VitoRobles@lemmy.today 4 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Can't wait to watch EA scrape by with Gacha games while SE Asia game companies destroy them with their Gacha games.

[–] pycorax@sh.itjust.works 4 points 15 hours ago

What SE Asia companies have any success with gacha? Most of them are Japanese, Korean and China.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago

Oh, that's not going to be a problem. We're just going to firewall off all the SE Asian companies with tariffs and sanctions.