It’s been just over a month since Sims, Apex Legends, and Madden publisher Electronic Arts was officially acquired by a private equity conglomerate consisting of the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF), Silver Lake Partners, and private equity firm Affinity Partners, owned by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Now, a new report has come out that it sounds like the Saudi Arabian government is considering merging the company with Savvy Games Group, the PIF’s video game company that owns companies like Scopely, which creates Pokémon Go.
Bloomberg‘s report says that PIF executives are considering plopping the biggest publisher in the world into its growing firm to “ensure better coordination between its assets.” As of today, no final decisions have been made, but any such deal will likely be kept on hold until Savvy acquires Chinese mobile gaming business Moontown for $6 billion.
As Bloomberg lays out, if the Saudi wealth fund does make this move, it would give it a single vehicle to make acquisitions and develop games, rather than having multiple subsidiaries operating independently. This hypothetical merger would likely run into some legal troubles, as it would raise antitrust inquiries similar to the Microsoft and Activision Blizzard acquisition.
Reports out of EA have stated that the company’s developers and ground-level workers are being kept in the dark about what this entire mess means, but many anticipate a bloodbath of layoffs for studios under the company’s umbrella.