Saudi Arabia and others purchase video game giant Electronic Arts for $55 billion

Hong Jian

A consortium that includes the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), along with Silver Lake and Affinity Partners (wholly owned by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law), announced September 29 it would be acquiring video game giant Electronic Arts (EA). The $55 billion leveraged buyout (LBO), the largest in history, is targeted for completion by June 2026.

Star Wars Battlefront II

The deal is the second largest purchase of a video game firm, after Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard in 2022 for $68.7 billion.

Electronic Arts’ most popular games include EA SPORTS FC series (formerly FIFA), the Sims franchise, the Battlefield series and the battle royale game Apex Legends. Other highly popular EA titles are the Mass Effect trilogy and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

The LBO to obtain Electronic Arts includes $35 billion from the consortium, while $20 billion in financing is expected to be provided by JPMorganChase. A leveraged buyout is a transaction where a company is bought using a great deal of borrowed money. The purchased firm’s assets and future cash flows are generally used as collateral. The goal, not always achieved, is to pay off the huge debt over a period of time.

EA is immediately saddled with $20 billion in debt. That large amount of debt means that the new owners will have to institute changes to EA’s operations. Reports indicate the consortium plans to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into all aspects of the corporate structure in an effort to reduce costs and build profits.

Mat Piscatella, senior director at market research firm Circana, called that debt figure “a shockingly large number to have to service.” EA may need to quickly and aggressively adapt, which could mean more layoffs and increased monetization. EA laid off 670 workers in 2024, and an additional 300-400 in May. According to a report from the Financial Times, EA’s new investors are betting on AI-powered cost-cutting measures to “significantly boost EA’s profits in the coming years.” (Polygon)

The Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP), a non-profit watchdog organization, commented that the

remarkable amount of debt used to finance this mega-deal is more than twice EA’s FY25 revenue. Leveraged buyouts such as this one are a critical driver of economic instability at private equity-owned companies. 56% of large corporate bankruptcies in 2024 were found to have connections to private equity, and large amounts of debt contributed to the recent bankruptcies of well-known consumer brands including Claire’s and Joann’s.

In all likelihood, there will be no escaping a considerable reduction in force at EA come the summer and fall of next year. This will only exacerbate an already dire jobs crisis within the video game industry and the entertainment industry as a whole.

Mass Effect 2

There has also been speculation that there will be an expansion of the most hated aspects of the EA monetization model. A spokesperson for the PESP observed that bringing

the private equity playbook to one of the largest video game studios is the crossover event no one asked for. Gamers are sick of the increasing monetization of their favorite titles. Game developers are railing against already-grueling conditions in the industry. Introducing a rapacious drive for profits and even more emphasis on AI into this equation will satisfy few outside of investors. 

EA has come under fire in recent years for its use of controversial in-game paywalls, loot boxes [online consumables, usually paid for with in-game credits that can be purchased with cash, generally randomized with low odds of receiving the most sought-after items], and other microtransactions. This acquisition could translate into even more live services including subscriptions, microtransactions, and in-game advertising, which already drive a significant proportion of EA’s revenue.

EA, in fact, derives more than half its revenue from monetization schemes—over $4.4 billion in 2024, which is 58 percent of its total revenue of $7.6 billion.

In one case, involving the Star Wars Battlefront II (2017) game, the response to the extensive use of loot boxes saw a boycott, which caused EA’s stock to fall by almost 10 percent and game sales to plummet dramatically.

EA has seen several class-action lawsuits filed against it over the years, with courts in a number of countries, notably Canada, Belgium and the Netherlands, finding that the loot boxes were a form of illegal gambling. (The ruling in the Netherlands was overturned on appeal).

The Saudis’ deeper involvement in video gaming comes on the heels of the regime’s mostly successful efforts to draw in the world’s leading comedians to the Riyadh Comedy Festival, running from September 26 to October 9. The festival featured some of the biggest names in the field, including Mo Amer, Aziz Ansari, Wayne Brady, Bill Burr, Jimmy Carr, Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K., Whitney Cummings, Pete Davidson, Kevin Hart, Gabriel Iglesias and Chris Tucker.

Critics contend the festival and its celebrity participants are being used to deflect attention from the Saudi authorities’ brutal suppression of free speech and innumerable human rights violations.

The comedy festival brought mostly bad press as a number of comedians, such as Shane Gillis, Atsuko Okatsuka and Stavros Halkias, refused to participate altogether, while others like Nimesh Patel dropped out of the event. Social media posts have called for a boycott of those accepting the invitation to perform in Riyadh.

Star Wars: Jedi-Fallen Order

Amnesty International reports that Saudi Arabia executed 345 people in 2024 (mostly by beheading), the highest figure ever recorded by the organization. The reinstatement of the death penalty for drug offenses helped drive the increase. Saudi authorities carried out 122 executions for drug-related crimes, a sharp rise from just two in 2023.  One hundred thirty-eight of those executed in 2024 were foreign nationals. More women were also put to death in 2024 than in previous years, four of them Nigerians. Rigged trials often depend on “confessions” extracted by torture. The Berlin-based European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights suggests the actual number of executions is much higher.

Then, of course, there is also the infamous murder and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

The move by PIF to further invest in the video game industry is an element of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, announced in 2016 as a means of diversifying the country’s economy in an effort to reduce the country’s dependence on oil. This process has seen the government and PIF invest heavily in construction (NEOM, an $8.8 trillion futuristic city project), tourism, sports (purchase of Newcastle United, funding of the Saudi Pro League’s top teams, World Cup 2034, LIV Golf tour, Formula 1 Grand Prix racing, Dakar Rally, a $500 million investment in the McLaren Group, boxing, MMA, tennis, cricket and WWE), entertainment, technology and renewable energy.

The Saudi government, with its huge investments in sports in particular, has been accused of “sportswashing,” defined by one human rights organization as “the act of sponsoring a sports team or event in order to distract from bad practices elsewhere. This tactic is often used by companies and governments with poor environmental or human rights records, exploiting people’s love of sport to ‘wash’ their image clean.”

A 2024 ITV documentary, Kingdom Uncovered: Inside Saudi Arabia, presented figures alleging that 21,000 migrant workers from India, Bangladesh and Nepal died on Saudi Vision 2030 projects between 2017 and 2024. It also reported that over 100,000 workers had disappeared. The Saudi government and its National Council for Occupational Safety and Health have denied the claims, calling them “misinformation.”

In regard to its effort to reduce the dependence on oil revenue, as of 2022, oil was still responsible for 40 percent of Saudi Arabia’s GDP and 75 percent of its fiscal revenue. 

The purchase of EA will only see a further escalation of the war being waged on video game workers. The number of jobs in the industry will continue to shrink, quality will go down and prices will continue to rise.

Powerful earthquake kills at least 72 in the Philippines

Owen Howell

At least 72 people have died after a 6.9 magnitude earthquake struck the island of Cebu in the central Philippines last Tuesday. Nearly 600 people were injured while 25,000 families have been displaced, many of them forced to sleep outdoors.

Firemen walk beside a collapsed building caused by a strong earthquake in Bogo city, Cebu Province, Central Philippines on Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. [AP Photo/Aaron Favila]

The quake hit Cebu, one of the country’s most populous islands, around 10:00 p.m. local time, jolting many residents out of their sleep. Roads cracked and buildings collapsed under the intense shaking, which led to widespread power blackouts. The epicentre was 19 kilometres north-east of Bogo, a coastal city of about 90,000 people.

Many of the 72 victims were killed when their houses collapsed, either due to the quake itself or landslides that followed after heavy rain.

Outside Bogo, in the town of Medellin, at least 12 residents were crushed to death by the falling ceilings and walls of their homes, some while sleeping. In another nearby town, San Remigio, five people including a child were killed by crumbling walls as they tried to escape a basketball game.

In Bogo, hundreds of residents gathered in a grassy field in total darkness after fleeing their homes. Forced to spend the night outdoors, many used plastic bags for shelter when it started to rain. Victims of the earthquake helped each other to set up shelters and mobile kitchens and tried to find temporary power sources as the night went on.

The Bogo city hospital was “overwhelmed” with patients, including dozens of injured children and adults, according to civil defence officials. Cebu Governor Pamela Baricuatro posted on social media, “Because of the high volume of patients with serious injuries, the medical staff tended to some of them outside the hospital.”

Patients were wheeled out of the overflowing hospital into tents outside, amid fears of further damage to buildings caused by aftershocks. Earthquake monitoring agencies recorded multiple aftershocks, the strongest being a magnitude of 6.

The extent of the quake’s damage was felt as far as Cebu City, 100 kilometres south of the epicentre, where the metal ceiling of a shopping mall fell down and buildings were left in disrepair.

Regional officials estimate the earthquake damaged or destroyed thousands of homes and has affected around 210,000 families, equivalent to 370,000 individuals. Over 110,000 across 42 communities will need assistance rebuilding homes and restoring livelihoods.

The morning after the quake, survivors lined up to refill containers of water, due to water systems across northern Cebu being damaged. Local authorities issued appeals for food and water to be delivered, as roads were cleared of debris and petrol stations were swamped with long queues.

In a village church now serving as shelter, Lucille Ipil, 43, while waiting for water, told Al Jazeera reporters, “The earthquake really ruined our lives. We cannot eat, drink or bathe properly.”

The provincial government also called on medical volunteers to come to Bogo and assist struggling hospital workers. Makeshift maternity wards were assembled outside hospital for mothers and their newborns.

Relief operations are being obstructed by the widespread damage to infrastructure and electricity cuts. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who visited Bogo on Thursday, told reporters, “We are having some difficulty because we have nowhere to put the displaced families because we’re unsure of the integrity of the evacuation centres.”

As a result, hundreds are now living in open fields under tarpaulins or borrowed tents. In San Remigio, nearly a thousand people are staying in two tent cities.

Aid has been particularly delayed in reaching rural areas and mountainous villages, with many bridges still impassable and roads covered from landslides. The Philippine Star spoke to villagers in Tinubdan, including Macasero, 35, a mother of a two-month-old baby who had slept in fields and begged for food on the streets, like many of her neighbours.

Food, potable water, shelter materials and medical supplies remain the top priorities, along with the need for water tankers, generators, and heavy equipment to clear debris and restore access roads, which are clogged with traffic between Cebu City and Bogo.

Aftershocks of 4.5 magnitude were recorded on Sunday, alarming residents still reeling from the devastation. The Cebu Provincial Government is maintaining a “red alert” status.

The Cebu earthquake has come in the middle of one of the worst flooding and typhoon seasons on record in the Philippines. One week before, Cebu and other provinces were battered by Super Typhoon Ragasa, which left at least 27 people dead, knocked out power in entire cities and towns and forced the evacuation of tens of thousands. In July, typhoon flooding killed 31 people.

It was under those conditions that mass protests on September 21 erupted across the Philippines. Tens of thousands joined rallies, including in Cebu, to protest government corruption surrounding flood control infrastructure projects. Recent revelations uncovered kickbacks to government officials and the theft of billions by private contractors.

Catastrophic natural disasters plague the Philippines, a country sitting atop the volcanic Ring of Fire, lashed by two dozen typhoons a year and whose cities are submerged during the monsoon months.

The devastating impact of these natural calamities, however, is a product of the lack of disaster facilities, the unplanned and underfunded system of public infrastructure, and densely crowded urban communities, which are the responsibility of successive governments.

In 2013, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction published a paper outlining the lessons learned from the catastrophic Typhoon Haiyan of that year. It concluded that tests such as soil analysis had to be conducted to ensure the safety of buildings throughout the Philippine archipelago. Furthermore, the number of hazard-adaptive evacuation centres had to be dramatically increased, while disaster programs had to be established to help the overall capacity of municipalities to respond to natural disasters.

In the 12 years since, vast swathes of the archipelago remain just as unprepared for earthquakes, and little has been done to ensure new buildings are constructed to resist further calamities. The Philippine political establishment, committed to protecting the corporate elite’s profit interests, will not spend the resources required to address social necessity.

During his visit to the earthquake site, President Marcos promised to provide a miserable 10,000 pesos ($US171) to each family that lost its home. Meanwhile, his administration’s drastic increases to military spending, as part of a US-led war drive against China, express the real priority of the Philippine ruling elite.

The Marcos government is no doubt fearful that such a pro-corporate agenda will provoke further mass opposition, as it has in recent weeks. According to local media outlets, the Philippine military reportedly deployed soldiers to “help maintain order” during the government’s relief efforts.

Fall of the French government: The ruling class seeks dictatorship

Alex Lantier

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu offered President Emmanuel Macron his resignation yesterday, making his 26-day government the shortest since the founding of France’s Fifth Republic in 1958.

While Lecornu was unpopular, falling to 15 percent in the polls in just a few weeks, his resignation reflects not a revitalization but a mortal crisis of French democracy. It cannot be understood apart from the martial law and civil war policies pursued across the Atlantic by the Trump administration, which is illegally sending troops into major US cities with an authorization to use deadly force. In each country, the world crisis is driving the capitalist oligarchy towards dictatorship.

Lecornu, France’s fifth prime minister in two years, has not resigned because the rival capitalist parties in the National Assembly have irreconcilable policy differences. They are united on rejecting tax increases for the capitalist oligarchy and instead imposing austerity to repay an unsustainable, €3.4 trillion sovereign debt, raise military spending, and strengthen the police-state machine. The capitalist oligarchy, aware that these policies face overwhelming popular opposition, is moving to install a far-right regime.

In Macron’s administration, a bitter struggle is unfolding between those trying to recruit factions of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s New Popular Front (NFP) to an ultra-reactionary government led by Macron, and those prepared to form a government directly with the neo-fascist National Rally (RN). Either regime would seek to violently repress mass opposition to its policies.

Lecornu resigned after outgoing Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, a leader of The Republicans (LR) whose positions are close to the far-right RN, threatened to censure Lecornu in the National Assembly. Retailleau denounced Lecornu’s nomination as defense minister of former Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, whom Retailleau blames for not resolving the debt crisis with harsh enough austerity.

Last year, Lecornu and another former prime minister of Macron, Edouard Philippe, held talks with RN leaders Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella on forming an RN government under Macron. These plans were blocked, however, by the election victory of the NFP, which finished first in the July 2024 legislative elections. Now, RN officials are calling for a new dissolution of the National Assembly, aiming to strengthen their position and play a role in the next government.

Le Pen called on Macron to resolve a “crisis of rule,” saying he “has two possible ways forward: either resignation, or dissolution.” She added that the RN is not demanding Macron’s resignation but that it views a dissolution of the Assembly as “unavoidable.” Her niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, called for a “union of the right” in upcoming elections.

As for Mélenchon, he first proposed a meeting of all the parties of the NFP—his own populist France Unbowed (LFI) party, the bourgeois Socialist Party (PS), the Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF) and the Greens. He urged them all to “consider all the possibilities opened up by this situation.”

In a press conference, he called for the impeachment Macron and reform of the institutions of the Fifth Republic. Mélenchon blamed the crisis on “the dead end in which the Fifth Republic inevitably plunges when the legitimacy of the presidential and legislative elections conflict.” Proposing to “address the heart of the problem, the president of the Republic and his legitimacy,” he called to support LFI’s impeachment motion against Macron in the Assembly.

However, first the PS, then the Greens and finally the PCF all indicated that they refused to meet Mélenchon and claimed they were ready to serve as “left” ministers under Macron. Green leader Marine Tondelier applauded Mélenchon’s policy of “unity”, but said that a meeting with LFI “will not happen.” She said there were not two but three options, “the resignation of Emmanuel Macron, a dissolution of parliament, and cohabitation” of a PS-PCF-Green-led government with Macron.

In a sign of the crisis at the top of the government, Macron was filmed by TV cameras taking an unprecedented solitary walk through central Paris as he tried to decide what to do. Last night, he demanded that Lecornu stay on at least until Wednesday to continue government talks. The Elysée presidential palace told AFP that Macron would “face his responsibilities” if these talks failed, and call new legislative elections.

It appears Macron has, for now, opted for a last-ditch attempt to assemble a government coalition based on the PS, PCF and Greens, parties linked to Macron, and factions of LR. There is also substantial opposition to Macron latest shift among nominally pro-Macron parties: Edouard Philippe went on morning television today to call for Macron’s resignation and new presidential and legislative elections.

A number of the parties involved are signaling, however, that they will try to work out a deal with Macron. Retailleau has declared that he is “not in the opposition,” signaling his potential readiness to back such a deal. Today, the Green party announced that it would host discussions “including LFI, with Clémentine Autain and representatives of François Ruffin” of a potential cohabitation under Macron.

Such meetings expose the bankruptcy of Mélenchon’s NFP. LFI built the NFP with discredited parties of capitalist government like the PS. Then, claiming only an alliance with Macron could keep the RN from taking power, Mélenchon endorsed Macron’s candidates in the 2024 legislative elections. He played a central role in building the government that is now collapsing, systematically refusing to make any appeal to mobilize the 8 million people who voted for him in the 2022 presidential elections.

The working class cannot base its policy on the calculations of such bankrupt parties. With its proposal of €100 billion in austerity measures, the RN has made clear that, should the ruling class entrust it with power, it would pursue a policy of mass impoverishment requiring a fascistic dictatorship. A PS-led government under Macron, whether or not it included LFI, would also rule against the people using violent repression.

The last time the PS was in power, under François Hollande in 2012-2017, it ruled via a state of emergency suspending democratic rights and brutally repressed mass protests against its labor law. This law, finally rammed through in its entirety by Macron, set into motion Macron’s current raft of pension cuts. While it mouths a few phrases about taxing the rich, a PS-led government would impose the diktat of the banks, which responded to the fall of Lecornu by intensifying speculation against French debt.