EA reportedly in ‘advanced talks’ for $50 billion buyout

Over the past five years, there have been numerous reports claiming that EA has been looking for a buyer. At one point, they were apparently in talks to join the Disney group, but that ultimately fell through. Now, it is claimed that a group of investors are looking to spend $50 billion to take the company private. 

In a paywalled article on The Wall Street Journal (via Insider Gaming), investment groups like Silver Lake and the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund are in ‘advanced talks' to pool their money together and acquire EA in a $50 billion deal. After the acquisition, the expectation is that EA will no longer be a publicly traded company, instead operating privately.

After going private, the investors would look to leverage EA's ties to sports leagues like the NFL, NHL, UFC and more to further profit from microtransaction sales. It is expected that EA will lean further into free-to-play titles to expose more gamers than ever before to these predatory microtransaction systems, such as Ultimate Team packs.

EA has an earnings call coming up at the end of October. Assuming WSJ has accurate information, we may get the first official details about this plan around that time.

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KitGuru Says: EA only just got back on board with single-player games. If this deal goes through, I expect that to change very quickly. 

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