EA Employees Fear Creative Crackdowns Under Saudi Ownership

Saudi Arabia’s purchase of Electronic Arts has officially closed, and the mood inside the company is far from celebratory. Employees are speaking candidly about fears ranging from mass layoffs to the slow death of inclusive game development, with some describing the buyout in bluntly moral terms.

A Deal Done, Doubts Remain

The acquisition, described as the largest leveraged buyout in private equity history, cleared its final hurdles earlier this month. EA’s leadership has attempted to reassure staff that the company’s cultural values will be preserved under new ownership, but those assurances have not landed well on the ground floor. According to PC Gamer, citing a Game Developer report, doubts persist widely among current staff despite those efforts.

One employee characterized the purchase as a calculated attempt to distract from Saudi Arabia’s human rights record by absorbing a comparatively progressive corporate culture. That framing connects directly to the concept of sportswashing, a strategy that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has publicly acknowledged and embraced without apology. In a 2023 Fox News interview, he stated he would continue sportswashing as long as it added to the country’s GDP, according to PC Gamer.

Creative Freedom Under Threat

The concern most often raised by staff is not that EA will issue explicit mandates banning certain content, but that self-censorship will quietly take hold. One employee predicted that projects simply will not get greenlit if they do not align with what the Saudi government prefers, and that EA’s own pitching process may shift to avoid conflict before any formal objection is raised.

Games with visible LGBTQ+ representation are seen as particularly vulnerable. Former BioWare lead writer Trick Weekes previously noted that sports titles and shooter franchises will almost certainly be safe, while content featuring gay characters or storylines faces a much murkier future. Titles like The Sims, which have built their identity around inclusive representation, sit at the center of those concerns.

One staffer told PC Gamer that it is hard to feel good about being acquired by a regime that stands at odds with progressive society, describing the situation as damaging to anyone who finds the buyout morally objectionable. Another employee was more direct, arguing that a company with a genuine moral backbone would not have entered into the deal at all, and that the involvement of Jared Kushner through his Saudi-backed Affinity Partners firm compounds the problem.

Layoff Anxiety Runs High

Beyond creative concerns, job security is a constant undercurrent. GamesRadar reports that developers describe feeling the threat of layoffs at all times, with the acquisition adding fresh urgency to those fears. Staff see little reason to believe that underperforming teams or titles would be protected under a private equity ownership structure driven by returns, with one employee stating it is hard to imagine such teams or projects surviving rather than being dissolved outright.

EA has not issued any public statement directly addressing the employee concerns surfaced in these reports.

Sources: PC Gamer, GamesRadar