The current EA sale to Saudi Arabia and other equity firms are being severely opposed by a union representing video game workers across the United States who has also released a public statement from the part of employees at the company. In the statement, the union has listed several of their objections regarding the much talked-about EA bid that will result in the long running company going private and they are pretty alarming for a number of reasons.
According to the videogame union, the EA deal will “further concentrate power and wealth into the hands of a few gatekeepers while doing nothing to address the concerns of players and workers.”
Their statement also emphasizes that EA is not a struggling company who will hugely benefit from such a deal that’s taking place and it also has the possibility to ‘jeopardize’ a lot of workers in the company in the form of layoffs and other job cuts.
“With annual revenues reaching $7.5 billion and $1 billion in profit each year, EA is one of the largest video game developers and publishers in the world. EA’s success has been entirely driven by tens of thousands of EA workers whose creativity, skill, and innovation made EA worth buying in the first place.”
“Yet we, the very people who will be jeopardized as a result of this deal, were not represented at all when this buyout was negotiated or discussed.”
After the sale is completed, it’s reported that EA will be under billions of dollars of debt which can result in massive layoffs in the near future.
“Every time private equity or billionaire investors take a studio private, workers lose visibility, transparency, and power,” they said. “Decisions that shape our jobs, our art, and our futures are made behind closed doors by executives who have never written a line of code, built worlds, or supported live services.”
The closing lines of the statement says that the “value of video games is in their workers” which is absolutely, objectively true and that the union is an ongoing effort for “standing together and refusing to let corporate greed decide the future of our industry.”
The statement reveals a lot of core values that perhaps need to be said clearly in the current state of the industry as at the center of any videogame experience, it’s always the live human being. So anything that can even have the possibility to become detrimental to either the people who make the games or the players who enjoy them, should always be put under scrutiny.
The union has also launched a petition to the United States Federal Trade Commission to look more into this deal and ensure “that any path forward protects jobs, and preserves creative freedom.”
