Electronic Arts confirmed on 4 August 2026 that its $55 billion acquisition by a consortium of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners has closed, making the publisher fully privately owned — with PIF holding 93.4% of the company. The deal, first announced on 29 September 2025, pays EA stockholders US$210 per share in cash and has been described as the largest leveraged buyout in history.

A leveraged buyout is a purchase where the acquiring group borrows heavily against the target company's own assets to fund the deal. In EA's case, that borrowing has left the company carrying roughly $18 billion in debt, according to Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, who reported the figures on Bluesky. The annual interest on that debt runs about $1.8 billion — and EA's annual EBITDA (a measure of operating profitability) sits around $1.5 billion. That spread means EA earns just about enough to cover its interest payments, with little left to pay down the principal.

To close that gap, EA told debt investors it plans to cut $700 million in annual costs, Schreier reported. Of that total, $170 million is earmarked for what the company called "organisational efficiencies" — a term Schreier characterised as mass layoffs. Video Games Chronicle

The cuts have already begun. VGC reported that EA laid off staff at Refactor Games following the acquisition's completion, and that the studio behind the upcoming Skate game confirmed layoffs in February 2026 as it restructures to support the title's long-term future. EA also confirmed in March 2026 that it had cut an undisclosed number of employees from the studios behind Battlefield 6 — Criterion, DICE, Motive, and Ripple Effect. Those followed earlier reductions in 2025, when Reuters reported that EA laid off 300 to 400 staff, including roughly 100 at Respawn Entertainment, and cancelled a Titanfall game then in development.

The PIF is Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund — a state-owned investment vehicle central to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's strategy of diversifying the Saudi economy beyond oil revenue. PIF already held a 9.9% stake in EA before the buyout; the consortium's agreement acquired the remaining shares, taking the company off public markets entirely.

For EA's roughly 13,000 employees, the math behind the acquisition is stark. An $18 billion debt load with $1.8 billion in annual interest leaves little room for the kind of investment — new studios, long development cycles, ambitious projects — that defines a major publisher. The $700 million cost-cutting target suggests more reductions are coming, on top of the hundreds of roles already eliminated across the company's studios over the past 18 months.

EA is the publisher behind franchises including EA Sports FC, Battlefield, The Sims, and Apex Legends. Whether those brands and the studios that make them weather the debt-driven restructuring intact is the question now facing everyone who works there.