EA's $55 billion privatization 'allows company to plan 10 years ahead, gives creative freedom'

Executives within EA including Glu Mobile CEO Nick Earl believe the $55 billion leveraged buyout is great for creative freedom.

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While financial analysts call EA's new $55 billion privatization deal a "head scratcher," some within EA believe the mega-acquisition is great news for the company's commercial and creative autonomy. New remarks from Glu Mobile's CEO highlight a positive outlook for the deal, with company boss Nick Earl saying that EA will no longer be on the hook to deliver consistent growth every quarter (instead, EA will now be on the hook for $20 billion in debt apparently funded via a "risky" loan). EA purchased Glu Mobile in 2021 for $2.1 billion.

In a recent interview with CBS News, Glu Mobile CEO Nick Earl gave some positives of the buyout and says he believes it's a "win" for creatives and gamers. "Being private just takes a lot of pressure off the company," he said.

"Having run a public company before in the gaming space, I can tell you that there's tremendous pressure from a quarterly perspective. Being freed up to be more creative, to think long-term, to think of 10 years down the road as opposed to quarterly or that fiscal year, this allows the company to make better creative decisions."

When asked if the buyout will allow EA to take bigger risks, Earl replied:

"I think so, I think they'll be able to take bigger risks in their traditional forms of distributing their games as well as in the new open areas that are coming to hold, like connected TV, connected devices in general, the mobile space, the freemium business model, all of which are really fueling the growth of the industry right now.

"This is a great jumping off point for Electronic Arts, one of the behemoths in the industry going private and being able to pursue this growth strategy as a private company with this consortium behind them."

The privatization will undoubtedly give EA much more freedom in what games get greenlit, funded, and eventually released, at least on a creative level, but the $20 billion debt will also be burdensome, and some experts predict that EA could trigger more layoffs to interrupt content production even further.