46 US lawmakers express "serious concerns" about the Saudi-led EA buyout's impact on game developers

New missive calls connected FTC to see imaginable anti-worker practises and breaches of anti-trust law

The Saudi-led acquisition of Electronic Arts is gathering with much friction successful the US House of Congress. 46 lawmakers person signed a missive calling connected the Federal Trade Commission to analyse the debt-financed $55 cardinal woody for signs that it could beryllium damaging for workers and anti-competitive to the constituent of breaking US anti-trust law.

As passed on by Game Developer, the missive has been organised by Labor Caucus co-chairs Steven Horsford, Debbie Dingell, Mark Pocan, and Donald Norcross – the Labor Caucus being a radical of implicit 120 members of Congress focused connected "advancing the needs of moving radical and the labour movement” successful the USA.

Sent 22 January, the missive suggests that the acquisition could pb to cost-cutting measures specified arsenic layoffs, the offshoring of development, and workplace closures. Which doesn't consciousness similar a monolithic reach, to me: if the woody goes through, the recently backstage and bulk Saudi-owned EA volition beryllium the banks $20 billion. They decidedly aren’t going to equilibrium the books by delegating each their PowerPoint presentations to ChatGPT.

“We are committed to preserving fair, competitory labour markets and safeguarding American jobs, and fixed the interaction of this acquisition connected workers, labour marketplace concentration, and the semipermanent competitiveness of the U.S. video crippled industry, we impulse you to thoroughly reappraisal this transaction,” the lawmakers – each of them Democrats – write.

“Workers successful the video crippled manufacture are already navigating an situation marked by instability, shrinking opportunities, and repeated rounds of layoffs,” the missive continues. “EA is 1 of the largest employers of video crippled workers successful the United States, and grounds suggests the institution already wields important wage-setting power.”

The lawmakers enactment that EA has experienced “a steep diminution successful median idiosyncratic wage year-over-year” and has “eliminated much than 1,700 U.S. jobs since 2023”, which they see indicative of “a labour marketplace wherever workers already person less alternatives and employers tin enforce deteriorating conditions without consequence.” They see the aforesaid $20 cardinal indebtedness bundle a beardown inducement “for the acquiring firms to prosecute further cost-cutting measures, including layoffs, offshoring, restructuring, oregon workplace closure.”

The Labor Caucus co-chairs further reason that the acquisition could beryllium some unspeakable for workers and anti-competitive, successful that the projected buyers – that’s Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, backstage equity steadfast Silver Lake, and Jared Kushner's Saudi-backed Affinity Partners - “hold extended ownership stakes crossed sports leagues, sports-betting platforms, endowment management, and game-development tools”.

“For example, Silver Lake’s ties to WME and TKO, on with PIF’s ownership of LIV Golf, would enactment EA nether the aforesaid umbrella arsenic large sports and amusement brands that its games trust connected for cardinal licenses,” the lawmakers write. They’re acrophobic that if the woody goes done – and fixed that Kushner is joined to the President's daughter, it’s improbable to person overmuch occupation - the purchasing consortium and EA would power capable of the sports assemblage to “restrict idiosyncratic mobility and trim bargaining powerfulness for employees passim the industry”. They besides deliberation it could interruption anti-trust laws.

Unveiled successful September past year, the EA woody has already attracted beardown disapproval from American unions and senators. The unions argue, amongst different things, that EA is “not a struggling company” close now, making hundreds of millions successful profit. As such, they deliberation plunging the institution into indebtedness is an workout successful padding capitalist pockets astatine the disbursal of idiosyncratic livelihoods. Can’t truly disagree!

Senators Richard Blumenthal and Elizabeth Warren, meanwhile, are disquieted that selling EA to Saudi Arabia is simply a nationalist information risk, commenting that the state mightiness usage EA user information for surveillance and propaganda. As ever, I tin spot the logic of this, but it’s worthy noting that EA among different North American companies routinely people games that are precise flattering to the US military, and that US companies person participated successful authorities surveillance operations.

A broader interest is that Saudi Arabia are buying up overseas brands, including a fig of eSports organisations, to distract attraction from their unspeakable quality rights record. There's besides anxiousness that the country’s authoritarian rulers mightiness enforce their values connected EA games similar The Sims that clasp diversity. One erstwhile BioWare enforcement has suggested that the Dragon Age workplace are peculiarly astatine hazard of either co-option oregon closure.