EA Shareholders Approve $55 Billion Take Private Deal Led by Saudi Arabia PIF and Silver Lake
Electronic Arts has cleared a key milestone in its plan to go private. According to a post by Stephen Totilo, EA shareholders have officially approved the $55 billion sale to a consortium led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), alongside Silver Lake and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners. The update was shared at 2:03pm PT on 2025 12 22 in Totilo’s post on Game File report.
With the shareholder vote now in the rear view mirror, the deal shifts into its most complex phase: regulatory approvals across multiple jurisdictions. If the recent era of mega deals in gaming has proven anything, it is that competition and national security scrutiny can stretch timelines far beyond a standard corporate closing cycle, turning what looks straightforward on paper into a long running public process with rolling headlines, filings, and political pressure.
That pressure is already visible in the United States. In a letter addressed to the Secretary of the Treasury and Chair of CFIUS, Senators Richard Blumenthal and Elizabeth Warren urged what they described as “searching scrutiny” of the proposed acquisition. The senators framed their concerns around foreign influence risk, the strategic nature of PIF as a Saudi government backed sovereign wealth fund, and the potential leverage that could come from owning one of the most influential interactive entertainment publishers in the market. The letter also highlights a $1 billion termination fee structure tied to regulatory failure and raises the issue of sensitive user data at massive scale, pointing to EA’s global user footprint, engagement time, and the broader reality that modern games function as always connected social platforms with communications and behavioral signals. The document is available here: US senators letter.
Concerns are not limited to Washington. In Canada, CWA Canada has publicly urged the Competition Bureau to scrutinize the deal, emphasizing worker impact, labor market concentration, and the risk of cost cutting measures following a heavily leveraged transaction. CWA Canada also points to EA’s footprint in the Canadian games ecosystem and highlights the industry’s ongoing layoff trend as a backdrop for why the acquisition structure matters for job stability, studio continuity, and long term production capacity. Their statement is published here: CWA Canada statement.
From a gamer and industry lens, the immediate question is not whether EA can keep shipping annualized franchises and live service updates, it almost certainly can. The bigger strategic question is governance and incentives. Going private can reduce quarterly market noise and unlock long horizon planning, but it can also introduce aggressive debt servicing logic that prioritizes margin over experimentation. In a market where community trust, creator retention, and content cadence are everything, any perception of heavier monetization pressure or reduced creative risk taking can become a brand tax that compounds over time.
The shareholder approval makes this deal real in a way that changes stakeholder behavior today, but the final outcome still sits with regulators. That means the industry is likely entering a long validation corridor where every response, filing, and public statement becomes part of the narrative shaping what EA will look like on the other side, if the deal closes.
Do you think regulators should treat this like a standard gaming acquisition, or should it face higher scrutiny because of platform scale, user data, and geopolitical influence concerns?
