Monday, September 29th 2025
EA's New Owner Plans AI Pivot 'To Significantly Cut Operating Costs'— Report
After last week's leak of an EA buyout, an official agreement was announced that would see the game studio be bought out by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners for a whopping $55 bn, with the current CEO, Andrew Wilson, remaining in his post for the time being. The deal is slated to go into effect in Q1 FY2027, pending shareholder and regulatory approvals. A subsequent report by The Financial Times, however, has provided slightly more details about the future of EA under its new ownership.
According to the new report, investors are banking on using AI to cut EA's operating costs and "manage a large debt load," indicating that we may see a drastic shift to the inclusion of AI in games, where it may replace developers and actors, although it is so far unclear exactly how EA and its new owners plan to leverage AI in the company's projects. This news comes mere months after the United Videogame Workers Union was founded, partially in response to the rise of artificial intelligence in gaming and mass layoffs that have plagued the gaming industry of late.
Source:
The Financial Times
According to the new report, investors are banking on using AI to cut EA's operating costs and "manage a large debt load," indicating that we may see a drastic shift to the inclusion of AI in games, where it may replace developers and actors, although it is so far unclear exactly how EA and its new owners plan to leverage AI in the company's projects. This news comes mere months after the United Videogame Workers Union was founded, partially in response to the rise of artificial intelligence in gaming and mass layoffs that have plagued the gaming industry of late.
39 Comments on EA's New Owner Plans AI Pivot 'To Significantly Cut Operating Costs'— Report
I'd feel bad but....this is EA, and EA development houses. They've had a contract signed with the devil for a long time. None of this should be surprising.
EA sucks, but I'll take lootboxes and overpriced DLC over AI and oil money completely destroying the essence of video games as an art form.
Operating costs are never all those mid lvl executives worth nothing, good for nothing, who have never done nothing, but are there to lead a meeting, do a P&L or tell everybody what "pareto" is.
Game developing, and industry in general is getting so vertical... jenga its the best way to describe it.
But when people were willing to open their wallets to lootboxes and overpriced DLC's, and it took AI slop for people to quit handing EA money then video games as an art form have died long ago.
Looks like bf6 is probably going to be the last possibly good BF game we are going to get.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Auto pilot to the nearest sun...
Don't break the sacred code of conduct by trash talking your garbage teammates now, meanie.
Star Wars is a license; EA has to my understanding no longer the exclusive rights to publish games in the franchise but it certainly is sad to see Respawn go. Their Star Wars: Zero Company will be my last EA game...if even that.
Publicly traded companies are under pressure from shareholders to increase profits by any means. Going private gives freedom and creativity to the company
Valve still private and it would be a very different one otherwise
And about the use of AI, every studio is doing it, every developer I know stopped using Google and now asks to ChatGPT. Voice actors now can act and then change how they sound with AI, and it works really well. AI it's also getting really good at generating video and images
I hope the deal good for both
This time it's their turn.
But who am I kidding, the same people who kept buying their rehashed crap games every year will still buy it just the same.