Couldn't happen to a nicer company
this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2025
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For a preview of what happens, look at the embracer buyouts. This is essentially a funeral
Good riddance. I hope by "private" they mean we won't hear from them again--they're a very private company, they keep to themselves, and never say anything. That sort of private.
(I know that's not what it means)
Had an EA Play so I could play NHL and FIFA, and the occasional ME Trilogy replay. Canceled it the moment the news broke about Kushner and the Saudis. Had paid for the year and was willing to sacrifice the final five months in the name of morality. But luckily they refunded me the difference.
Is this better or worse than being a public company?
This specific instance? Worse.
It's being bought by blood money (Kushner's $2billion investment/bribe to hush up the US government about the brutal murder of a US resident journalist at the hands of the Saudis). Plus a country that somehow is even more squeamish about content than the US is in charge - look forward to way more censorship.
Depends on your perspective.
This is bad from a business, creativity, and human rights standpoint.
However, it's good that a shitty company like EA with predatory products is going to be even more exploitative and predatory from here on out.
I enjoy watching the useful idiots get taken for a ride.
Haven’t bought an EA game in over a decade. Don’t intend to change that anytime soon.
Reddit, and by extension Lemmy, have this infatuated vision of how private companies are actually great for customers because whenever somebody asks about Steam the explanation given is that if this were a publicly traded company it would be horrendous but because it's private everything is perfect and there are rainbows inside their offices.
The truth is EA will be just as aggressively profit driven as it already is, the new owners will try to reduce costs just like always, and IPs that sell more will continue to be prioritized just like before.
Essentially a private company can be owned by a dickhead, or a nice person who's not all about profitmaxing. A publicly traded company is forced to maximize shareholder value.
Valve as a publicly traded company would quickly become another EA/Microsoft/Whatever, because it's only the next quarter that matters. Valve under GabeN has been built to bring in large, and yet sustainable profits.
EA's new owners are going to be the absolute worst. So it's going to be a worse company than before.
Consider that Erik Prince's murder-for-hire company is private. So is Xitter now that Melon bought it.
So it's not that private companies are better, but rather that they have the capacity to be better. And it all depends on the owners.
The reason Steam is less bad is that its president is less of a dick. The reason that works is because he's not beholden to other shareholders, because he's the majority owner himself. If they were publicly owned, he wouldn't have the liberties to make long-term decisions instead of (only) short-term money grabs.
But his decisions most likely aren't the result of some bleeding heart morality so much as a less shortsighted profit calculation. Newell is still a billionaire, and not just because of the assets Valve owns. He apparently has several ships, which is several more than most people can afford. He also owns a custom yacht manufacturing company, which is also a lot more than most people can afford (both the products and the company). He might not be as all-around awful as other billionaires, but you don't get this rich through your own work alone.
Private ownership isn't a guarantor of customer-friendly behaviour. It just eliminates one factor forcing companies to prioritise profits, but it can't replace customer protection regulations and oversight.
Gabe Newell is basically a benevolent dictator. Valve is proof that private companies have the potential to not completely suck and publicly traded ones basically always seem to suck.
Its just that usually private ones suck as well.
He apparently has several ships, which is several more than most people can afford.
That number for the rest of us being, of course, none.
Well, I can probably afford a small RC boat or something. Not quite the same caliber that could carry humans on the ocean, but more than nothing I guess.
Dangit, now I want to look up how much a model yacht would cost and if I could afford to brag "I've got a small fleet of yachts"...
If it's gone public, then generally going private is a bad thing. It's usually some investors that are going to do something bad with the company.
A company that starts and stays private may be all the better for it (but that's hardly assured either). If they are a success and didn't bring a lot of investors, then it generally means they actually care about the work intrinsically.
Yes.
Sail the high seas.
And the worst get worst-er
101 how to make your company’s bad public image even worse.
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