#predicting the future

The Saudis don't own a stake in Ubisoft. The biggest stakeholders in Ubisoft is the Guillemot family (you may recognize the name, their CEO is Yves Guillemot). Second is Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and then Tencent Holdings. That said, I've looked at the facts of the situation and here are the two takes I have on EA Saudi situation.

The Charitable Take

In most leveraged buyouts, the debt taken on is significantly larger than the money put in by the buyers. We can see this historically with cases like Toys R Us in 2005, where Bain Capital put in $1 billion of its own money and added $5.6 billion in additional debt for the buyout. In EA's case, the new debt ($20 billion) is considerably less than what the consortium is putting in ($36 billion), which means they're putting in a lot more of their own money (that they could lose) than normal. Historically lower debt in a LBO means that the buyer is trying to minimally disrupt the company during the buyout process. This tracks with what I know about the Saudi PIF goals - they are in it for the longer time horizon and are not trying to get a quick turnaround.

The Realistic Take

Even though the debt is smaller than most LBOs, it's still too big for EA to handle as it currently stands. The EA leadership has already signaled to their lenders that they plan on cutting $700 million in operating costs. This means that studios will either be sold (if a buyer can be found) or closed. This will also certainly mean big layoffs. The investors have already announced that they expect big productivity gains (>$100 million) by using AI, which seems like a plan destined for failure. What this likely means is that, in order to keep servicing this debt, the remaining franchises after the culling will probably pursue monetization more aggressively across the board.

One way that's been well-documented so far is the PIF has already announced their plan to expand significantly into mobile. They already have a large mobile gaming studio (Scopely, developer for Monopoly Go and Pokemon Go) that they will probably use to collaborate with EA to produce aggressively-monetized mobile titles using the well-known EA-owned IPs (e.g. Apex Legends, the Sims, Battlefield, etc.). This wouldn't happen any time soon, it would take years for something like this to be set up and built out. However, that is time they absolutely have now because they just took the company private and the Saudis have more than enough additional cash to keep the company afloat for as long as they want. The facts line up with this as a reasonable long-term goal.

[Join us on Discord] and/or [Support us on Patreon]

Got a burning question you want answered?

Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on Twitter

Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on BlueSky

Long questions: Ask a Game Dev on Tumblr

Watching star trek next generation. First episode. 1987. In a quick background shot there's a guy wearing one of the short skirt uniforms. In 1987. SO BADASS.

I absolutely love this quick cut shot. The Federation is supposed to be a utopian society. So the designers are very clearly stating that traditionally feminine garb is no longer gender coded in utopian society.

It's a super quick shot, likely leaving viewers going, "Was that...?" and having no way to confirm it. (No pause, rewind, or video release.) So they can get away with it.

But. Seriously. They did this in what was THE VERY FIRST EPISODE OF THE BRAND NEW STAR TREK REBOOT.

They boldly went.

No Context Crow #325: Prognosticating Crow

The future is not set in stone, what I believe the tarot does is first and foremost tells you what energies are at play in your life and the most likely outcome that this will lead to. The most likely outcome is not the definitive outcome, it is simply one of many possibilities that can occur. What would be the point of getting a reading and being told something awful is going to happen and then simply accepting it as fact?

If you are a witch or magician and you are accepting your fate without trying to change your circumstances for the better you are a poor occultist in my view. If a tarot reader tells you that if you buy stock on the stock market and will lose money, would you still proceed to invest? You have been told a likely future in which you lose money, but by obtaining that knowledge you have the agency to change direction and ensure you make money.

There are of course some things I do believe are more set in stone, major life events etc. Some things are unavoidable, if a tarot reader tells you that your physical health is bad and that sometime in the near future you're going to have complications it is probably already too late. Things like that are more set in stone and this brings me to another point. The near future is more solidified and easier to predict than the far future and this is because of the many choices you have not yet made that will alter the future.

I find tarots ability to predict the future less useful than its ability to be used introspection and plotting a course that can guide you into the future. By performing a reading for the future you are in a sense already going against the thread of the fates and altering that person's natural course by giving them knowledge of what is likely to happen and giving them more agency to change this than if they had not had the reading in the first place.

It all becomes complex, it's like a doctor who episode.