On Sept. 29, 2025, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, equity company Silver Lake, and investment firm Affinity Partners, the latter of which is led by Jared Kushner, announced their intention to acquire EA for $55 billion. Once complete, the acquisition would take the company private, add another high-profile video game publisher to the PIF’s portfolio, and put one of the biggest video game publishers under owners with close personal ties to the U.S. government.
If you’re worried about EA’s future, you’re in good company. The acquisition is unprecedented on many levels, and it throws the future of EA’s studios and some of its biggest franchises —including BioWare, The Sims, Apex Legends, and Battlefield — into doubt. Industry analysts have varying predictions about what could come next. However, there are a few constants — namely, that EA will likely implement large-scale spending reductions and sell off its less profitable studios.
Freedom at a price
Some investment firms, including Freedom Capital Markets, predict the buyout will free EA from the pressure of meeting investor expectations and studios under its umbrella could gain the freedom to pursue riskier, more creative projects. But other industry analysts don’t share that positive outlook, at least not entirely. Rhys Elliot, head of market analytics at Alinea, said there’s a multi-billion dollar roadblock ahead of that rosy outcome.
“The $20 billion in debt looming over this transaction flies in the face of this advantage,” Elliot said on LinkedIn, referring to the B-rated portion of the $55 billion acquisition price that EA will eventually have to pay itself.
So what does “B-rated” have to do with it? Credit raters use various metrics to grade debt and loans, but a single-B rating is a low one, regardless of which firm is evaluating it. These loans are colloquially known as “junk debt,” risky loans made to unreliable sources with a low chance of being paid back in full.
That grade is in spite of EA’s robust cash flow, which Elliot put at $2 billion, and EA’s status as one of the few remaining major video game publishers in North America. Analyst firm Newzoo ranks EA as the number-one publisher across 37 markets, with 31 percent of active players engaging with at least one EA game on a regular basis. Circana’s senior director Mat Piscatella, speaking to Polygon via email, succinctly calls the situation the PIF and Affinity Partners are putting EA in “unsettling.”
President of DFC Intelligence David Cole elaborates further on this point, asserting that EA will move away from creative risk-taking. “[Leveraged buyouts] are historically followed by cutbacks and the sell of non-essential assets in the short-term,” he tells Polygon in an email exchange. “Long term, this can allow a company like EA to focus on more creative risky ventures, as they are not beholden to public shareholders. But short term, we expect them to focus more on core money generators and look to get top dollar for ‘secondary’ IP/products.”
EA Sports
That means EA Sports’ franchises, including Madden NFL and EA FC (formerly FIFA), will likely face no existential threat. However, Cole says he expects EA to try expanding them in some capacity.
How well that pans out for the publisher is less certain. Freedom Capital Markets, which took a bullish stance on the acquisition news, cited EA’s reliance on microtransactions and annual sports releases as a problem for its business model — fine when it works, costly when it doesn’t, as EA’s January 2025 preliminary financial report showed. Relying on annual releases and microtransactions puts EA in the same position it was in before the buyout, only instead of investors to please, now EA has $20 billion in debt to pay off.
More monetization might help EA get higher profits from its sports franchises, but the strategy isn’t a foolproof one. EA tried more aggressive monetization with Apex Legends in 2024 and saw a drop in player count and predicted revenue as a result, despite reversing some of the changes. Newzoo ranked Respawn’s live-service battle royale as EA’s eighth most profitable product between August 2024 and August 2025 in the U.S., just above Dragon Age: The Veilguard (although it was fifth in Europe). At a glance, a poor-performing live-service multiplayer game, in a market oversaturated with similar games, seems like something EA would move away from under the weight of its new debt. However, Cole says he believes it’s exactly the area where EA will focus its creative risk-taking in the foreseeable future — a high-revenue earner with the potential to grow.
Apex and Battlefield
Apex Legends has certainly been a big earner in the past. In 2022, EA reported it generated over $2 billion since launching in 2019, and after announcing lower predicted revenue in 2024, Wilson said EA was committed to “systematic changes” to keep Apex Legends competitive in the multiplayer shooter space. It’s no guarantee of future stability, though. Cole says the right offer could always persuade EA to offload Apex Legends by itself or Respawn in its entirety, regardless of the studio’s earnings potential.
Meanwhile, the experts seem to agree that the future of DICE depends on Battlefield 6. Freedom Capital Markets believes EA is treating Battlefield 6 as an experiment in breaking out of its sports-heavy model, an attempt at reaching audience segments it hasn’t been able to court for years. Cole says EA’s evaluation of its future will likely take into account “how the company feels about competing with Call of Duty going forward and whether BF6 gains some momentum in that direction.” If EA doesn’t see a future for Battlefield, Cole predicts DICE will likely be sold.
Cole believes selective sell-offs will likely characterize EA’s approach to its other studios and franchises. Smaller studios with fewer high-earning titles to their names, such as Criterion, are more likely to be sold off than closed. Those in support capacities, as Motive has been with DICE and Battlefield 6, may be sold independently or bundled with a studio they’ve worked closely with. Sell-offs might sound more appealing than closures, but these are usually preceded by staff cuts and aggressive spending reductions. Elliot expects many layoffs outside of EA Sports, particularly at studios that aren’t making live-service games. He also predicts studios will suffer further losses through brain drain, as team members resign in protest against the extensive human rights violations of EA’s new co-owners and their ties to U.S. president Donald Trump’s anti-LGBTQ+ policies.
The Sims and BioWare
Those ties have sparked concerns about the future within The Sims player community. However, Cole says EA is more likely to sell Maxis’ smaller properties, such as SimCity and Spores, and would only part with the core Sims franchise for a premium offer. Cole believes drastic changes to The Sims 4 are unlikely as well, largely for economic reasons. The Sims 4 was EA’s fourth most profitable game between August 2024 and August 2025, behind only its core sports franchises. In 2023, EA reported that more than 70 million people played The Sims 4, with a sizeable increase in player numbers after the game transitioned to a free-to-play mode, with more new players buying expansion packs than ever.
Whether EA can retain those players and encourage future spending under its new owners is another matter. During a GDC presentation based on a survey Maxis conducted in 2022, former Maxis producer Phillip Ring said 43 percent of Sims 4 players identified as non-heterosexual, and 17 percent identify as transgender or gender-fluid. EA CEO Andrew Wilson claimed the acquisition would have no effect on EA’s values, though Elliot — and some EA workers — expressed concerns over whether EA would lessen inclusivity and other so-called “political” elements in its games. In other words, representation and inclusivity may not be taken out of The Sims 4, but it may no longer be a priority in future updates or collaborations either. If so, EA would be neglecting almost half of the game’s audience.
The one unanimous belief among analysts is that BioWare will likely not remain at EA following completion of the sale. Elliot said BioWare was likely in EA’s “crosshairs” already after a decade of troubled development and releases. The most recent, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, suffered from a tumultuous development cycle and multiple changes in direction, then fell 50 percent short of EA’s internal player-count expectations. And given the studio’s history of highlighting LGBTQ+ characters, Elliot said EA may see BioWare as an even bigger liability under its new owners. Cole similarly calls BioWare and its franchises “prime candidates” for a sale, either individually — Mass Effect going to one buyer, for example, while Dragon Age gets snapped up by another — or as one entity.
The EA acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of EA’s 2027 fiscal year, which begins on April 1, 2026. It’s possible EA may begin downsizing and preparing to sell some of its properties for sale before that point, but Elliot expects layoffs and other spending reductions to continue into 2028 and even beyond.