This month, the biggest leveraged buyout in the history of private equity went through and now EA is owned by a consortium made up of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and the investment firms Silver Lake and Affinity Partners. We don’t know what EA will be like under its new owners, but Employees are bracing for the worst. The company took on $20 billion in debt as part of the deal. Will that change the way it does business or encourage it to rely on the formula that’s gotten it where it is?
I asked Emmanuel Rosier, director of market intelligence at industry analysts Newzoo, who spent nine years as a senior manager at EA.
“I think everything is open at this point,” Rosier says. “I suspect that sports will remain the key focus for EA, particularly European football, soccer, because of the importance of that sport in Saudi and in Middle East territories. You see a lot of synergies in that context. You can also expect that they will push even more for esports, also given the popularity of esports in Saudi and in some other territories. The question mark is probably the second-tier or third-tier IP in the portfolio of EA.”
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As someone who had to double check whether the FC in EA Sports FC really does stand for football club (it does), I am personally more interested in these lower-tier properties.
“They have a lot of dormant IPs that have not been used for so many years,” Rosier says. “You know, they have IPs like Ultima, they have IPs like Wing Commander and this and that, and it’s not being used at all. So the question is, would some of them be maybe sold, or will they hire studios to leverage these IPs? Because we see every day the importance of IPs.”
There’s a real “monkey paw curling” element to the idea of Ultima and Wing Commander being revived. I remember the browser-based Evony clone Lord of Ultima from 2010, an attempt to jump on the “play now, my Lord” bandwagon with the Ultima brand that lasted a mere four years before being shut down. Much as I’d like to see something more respectful, like a tasteful remake of Ultima 4 and a remaster for Wing Commander Privateer, that would rely on anybody at EA actually caring about those games beyond their value as “intellectual property”, a possibility Rosier dashes with the next words out of his mouth.
“I think there are plenty of IPs like that at EA that nobody cares about at this moment,” he says. “I think probably they will leverage that either by just selling it or trying to find external studios that can work on that. Maybe mobile games.”
Of course, in between its big-budget live-service blockbusters and the forgotten games they acquired when the world was young, EA owns something else close to my heart. “Then in the middle you have these IPs like the BioWare IPs,” Rosier says. “They’ve been struggling as a studio, as a brand have been struggling in recent years, and I don’t know if they will keep funding that one. I think that’s the biggest question mark for me.”
Surely EA wouldn’t pull funding from BioWare before it had a chance at redemption, right? Dragon Age has always been swingy, a series defined by constant reinvention and ups and downs. Mass Effect had a golden age that lasted for two-and-a-half games, and that’s a foundation you can build on. Right?
“I will believe it when I see it, the next Mass Effect game, let’s put it that way,” Rosier replies.
Of course, BioWare hasn’t had much to say about the development of the next Mass Effect, but that’s because the studio has had its head down working hard.
“I’ve worked many years with BioWare, sometimes it can stretch for years and years until something comes,” says Rosier, who spent over four years as a senior franchise demand planning manager during his time at EA. “I think everything can happen at this moment. They can pull the plug very, very easily. And if the new investor, they don’t have that many feelings about the history of the portfolio, they will take the most financially sound decision most probably.”
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