To protest against the ongoing billion dollar deal that will see EA being sold to a group of organizations which include the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF), gamers are currently preparing for a “raid” into EA’s headquarters in Redwood City, California, in order to demand a stop to the deal. A group named The Players Alliance is the organizer behind this event which is set to commence on May 11 at 1:00 p.m. ET, and has also shared further details on what it’s trying to achieve through the protest.
In a recent press release announcing the “raid” to the EA headquarters, The Players Alliance has explained that the ongoing deal would “pressure the company to cut jobs, replace developers with AI, and impose price hikes through more aggressive monetization.” Also, the entire event will be live-streamed on SlayerKase’s Twitch stream so you can have a front-row seat into everything that unfolds on that day.
“Gamers in cosplay as video game characters will ‘raid’ EA’s Redwood City campus, unrolling a 50-foot scroll bearing more than 70,000 petition signatures on the Madden football field at the center of the campus. Gamers playing the role of the corporate villains behind the deal will appear in suits and top hats, accompanied by a giant health bar prop that depletes as supporters engage digitally. The Players Alliance will also stage a loot box demonstration, opening oversized gold crates painted with EA’s logo to reveal the consequences of the buyout, including mass layoffs, studio closures, and aggressive monetization,” the official press release from Players Alliance has stated.
Although EA had previously stated that even after the deal, they’d retain total creative freedom over all of their games including it’s player-first values fully intact, still, the initiative behind the upcoming event demonstrates that EA and the other companies that are engaged in the ongoing deal didn’t quite manage to gain the support of players. This also shows that despite the fact that the videogame industry is run by the players, they ultimately have little to no choice whatsoever in what actually goes on in the industry which gives rise to a lack of trust among the gamers themselves.
