Saudi-owned EA plans $700M in cuts including layoffs after $18B debt buyout

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Electronic Arts has officially now passed into the hands of Saudi Arabia —specifically, the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, as well as firms Silver Lake and Affinity Partners. It is with a grim lack of surprise that I now inform you that this will, reportedly, involve a lot of layoffs.

The news comes courtesy of Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, who posted to Bluesky : "EA officially goes private tonight, meaning: EA will no longer trade on the NASDAQ for the first time in 36 years, all stockholders of EA (including many employees) will receive $210/share, [and] EA will take on $18 billion (!) in debt, putting it on the hook to pay ~$1.8 billion/year in interest.

"EA's annual Ebitda is around $1.5 billion, which should be enough to service the interest payments. But the publisher has told debt investors that it will cut $700 million in annual costs including $170 million in 'organizational efficiencies,' per Bloomberg. In other words: mass layoffs."

This is, technically, a called shot—but it's a called shot in the sense of saying that a giant boulder rolling down a hill is probably going to flatten the sand castle it's headed towards. Maybe it hits a pebble and jolts out of the way at the last second—maybe $700 million in annual costs will be cut through, I don't know, pragmatic restructuring or executives reducing their salaries. Perhaps pigs shall fly. Anything's possible.

But given the state of the current industry, I'm inclined to agree with Schreier here. Large-scale acquisitions like this typically result in mass layoffs and studio closures, as was the case with Microsoft's $68.7 billion purchase of Blizzard , which resulted in a bloodbath of 1,900 laid-off employees across the company and Xbox.

That ugly trend has continued unabated: Microsoft's recent 'reset' saw 1,600 layoffs, with 1,600 more to come by 2027 , Ubisoft has continued to make deep cuts as it struggles to stay alive, and yes, EA has already made significant layoffs of its own ahead of the acquisition—and that's just the past couple months.

There's a huge flood of talent, both institutional and new, that's now being dropped into a hiring pool already thousands strong—adding what's bound to be a rash of layoffs from EA to that pile is bound to be grim tidings.

All of this comes in spite of the fact that the wider industry is as big and as profitable as it always has been, with global games revenue surpassing $200 billion in 2025 . Where's all that money going? Clearly not to the people making the things, that's for sure.

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