EA Just Sold For $55B?! Here’s The Truth About How This Deal Affects YOU

Let's start with the Electronic Arts acquisition. This one blew my mind. 55 billion for a game development company. How dare you insinuate it should be less? No, I'm just I love you, Tom. I love Kaizen. I was like, 55 billion in 2025? EA? The Sims? Is that worth 55 b- Like, it was just >> It's sports franchise. >> It was surprising. This is good because any deal in a space means that activity is rolling. Other people are looking for it. So, I I know why gaming would like it. >> really care about it from that perspective. >> Got it. I expect players to care about this very deeply. Now, the player community is like sort of in a weird state. One of the things that they're saying is, "Oh my god, yes. They've been bought by a company uh a consortium of investment houses that are in Middle Eastern. This is going to be great. No more woke garbage, right?" There's a huge contingency of millennial gamers. The more time I spend watching gaming content, the more I realize how much this is a millennial reaction. Utterly fascinating. Uh but millennial gamers are up in arms about anything that has to do with woke this, that, or the other. >> But then people are like, "Well, hold on a second. Didn't Saudi Arabia like uh bone saw cat to pieces like You're kidding me. distant past? Is that Like, aren't they going to inject their own values into the games? It'll be interesting to see how this plays out." So, for sure, they're going to now inject their values or have bumpers in the alley of like, "Well, don't say things bad about us or whatever." You will for sure see that the bad guys in an EA game aren't going to be Middle Eastern. Let's just say that. Uh so, they're going to point you in some other direction. Certainly, brace yourselves for that, but um ultimately, businesses like this, especially when you're doing it on debt, they need to make money. And so, the things that I would expect gamers to really be focusing on is what are they going to do to the monetization here. Now, the reality is as a game developer, I'm paying a lot of attention to where games are going in the future, and games are going mobile. Mobile gamers don't have all the beef with the microtransactions. So, you can expect that they're hyper aware of that, that they're going to be looking for ways to incorporate microtransactions into what they view as the future. And so, if I were them, I would be looking at this going, "Uh okay. How much of our revenue do we generate off PC gamers? Do we think that's uh increasing or decreasing?" I would say it's decreasing. How much are we making off mobile? Do we think that's going to increase or decrease? I think they're all going to look at that and go, "That's increasing." So, I would expect over the next 10 years for them to begin putting more and more of their time and attention into mobile first things, migrating their famous properties into mobile playable games, either simplifying the mechanics or just using more of the loot-driven mechanics, um pay-to-win mechanics, things like that. And so, millennial gamers, traditional gamers, however you want to think about it, which by the way, I'm one of, not millennial, but traditional. So, I play on PC and console, but I think you're going to see a move like that. So, if gamers are going to either be excited or be traumatized, I would look at it from that perspective because these guys, like when they do acquisitions like this, they're not like, "I like games." They're going into this, and they're going, "Oh, I understand this at the level of a spreadsheet." majority of the people involved in these acquisitions don't play games, have never played games, literally don't care. They're like Warren Buffett. They are sitting looking at a bunch of spreadsheets and going, "Where is something undervalued? Where do we think we understand the future better than somebody else? Where is there a discrepancy between the price that the shares are trading at versus where we think they'll trade out in 3 or 5 years?" That's it, man. That is how they process through this stuff. It is totally mercenary. Now, you don't need to be traumatized by that because one of the most mercenary things that a company can do is go find the young, hungry talent that really want to make something awesome. This is what always makes me laugh is that remember, companies are leading from the back. You'll get like Quest ended up succeeding the way that it did because we led from the front. We were for our own reasons hell-bent to build that company, and we didn't know if it would work. That was us going, "Eh, this might be a suicide run, but I really want to do this for my own reasons," and it worked. Once it works, everybody else just floods in at the spreadsheet level. Everybody's looking for that, right? So, the game I'm building, Project Kaizen, I'm not building chasing a spreadsheet. I'm building the game I want to play. I've got a whole thesis about what I think is going to happen to the world. I think AI is going to make the world so easy that people are going to be forced to find hard mode, and they're going to find it in simulated worlds. That isn't what I'm building today. I'm laying the foundation, trying to figure out the game mechanics. That's 5-10 years away. I'm leading from the front. Maybe it'll fail catastrophically. When you lead from the front, you run that risk. But this acquisition is about leading from behind. So, gamers have proven we want a mobile game. I'm just growing up with a mobile device, always in my hand, always easy. I'm not growing up in the PC era where it's like all my friends get together. It's not how they play games now. If you want to understand where this acquisition goes, look at it through the lens of assets, investments, entrepreneurship, and it's going to get a lot clearer. They're going to try to maximize the profits of all of those games, and they will do it through the ways that I just talked about. Now, I get why like it was sad for me to watch what happened to Star Wars, but there's always going to be cool new [ __ ] So, like, look, I get it, nostalgia, all that. Nobody's more like nostalgia-baited than me, but at the same time, good games will continue to get made in the way that you like good games. They just might be super niche. I will do a PSA to all of my millennial gamers out there. I've watched so much of your content. Literally, at this point, I've seen well north of a hundred videos about the state of the gaming industry, specifically from They don't call themselves millennials, but you can tell that they're millennials. Uh from their perspective, and it's just all lamentations. You are making these less fun for yourself. And I would just say, find a path to like, where is the joy? Where is people doing cool stuff so you can fall in love again? I want that for you. Uh so, we'll see. Anyway, All right. So, we have that on one side of the coin. And honestly, the gaming community seems to be aligned with it. Hey, it's not private no more. Hey, I see this is going to open up more investment. It hasn't been what we've seen on the other side where the Riyadh uh comedy festival was announced, and all these comedians were announced to be a part of it, and immediately everybody was mad. Like, how can they speak to this? This is the same country that killed the journalism. This is going crazy. People have memes cuz Pete Davidson lost his dad in 9/11. So, people have memes of his dad licking in heaven. Like, how dare you to go to the country that was So, there's a It's kind of like on one side of this, people are like, "Okay. Future gaming, we finally got the investment back. They're leading from behind. We're good." But then on this side, it's like, "Comedy? How dare you do comedy in it authoritarian regime? How dare you uh open up those relations? Are these on the same thing like Does this Everybody's going to have to decide, how do you treat somebody that has different values than you? Do you try to alienate them, isolate them, and say, "Until you think like I think, [ __ ] you"? Or do you go, "All right, listen. I don't like a lot of the things that they stand for. I see what they're trying to do. They're trying to modernize. I'm going to look at the restrictions that they're putting me under, and I'm either okay with the restrictions or I'm not. They can't make me say something I don't believe, and I won't say something I don't believe, but I don't need to go over there to be antagonistic. I am running a business. This is very good for my business. I'm going to go or not. I believe it's Shane Gillis that decided he wanted to take a principled stand. Totally get that. Full disclosure, I went to Saudi Arabia to do uh three live interviews there. They were doing a health expo, and they wanted to bring me in to film live from the health expo, and I went and did it. I had no beef with it whatsoever, fully aware that Saudi Arabia itself had a journalist killed, but I'm like, "It wasn't like the guy running this event is over there like wiping the blood off the bone saw." Come on, dude. I'm good. Just as I would not want to be judged for everything that America did, nor would I uh say that anybody coming to America is signing off on everything that America did. Oh, and by the way, I want people to cooperate with us. I think that Saudi Arabia is finally trying to step into the 21st century. Behind the scenes, I think that they are using violence to corral like the royal family, to get everybody pointed in the right direction, to understand that we're going to have to move away from oil, all that. I see humans as incredibly complicated figures. You were not going to look at any government, any point in history, and be like, "Oh my god, they just did everything right." >> Yeah. I was just praising the founding fathers, who by the way, had slaves. You're just never going to find it. So, I don't know what universe people live in. I don't have a beef with anybody that's like, "You know what? I want to take a principled stand. That means more to me." Yeah, go do your thing. That's going to allow you to say things and be taken as credible later that other people won't be able to say. And for people that are like, "Yeah, man, listen. I'm not signing off on the government, but I've never made this much money for this before. Oh, and by the way, I want to go see it." Yeah, totally. That was exactly what I did. And I was like, my answer when asked was, uh they cannot get me to say something I don't believe. Given that, I've got no problem. And so, I went and did the interviews I wanted to do, uh said the things I wanted to say, and literally didn't have to corral myself. We were talking about health, so it's not like Saudi Arabia was going to come up. No beef with this whatsoever. These guys are running a business. They are entertainers. But when, let's say your normal fee is 25,000 for a gig, and they're going to pay you 250,000, it's like even as like a life story, it's just interesting. Again, they're not being invited by the guy wiping blood off the bone saw. And just keep in mind, how many people have American governments killed? Like this week, instead of trying to build bridges, people are trying to find reasons to be holier than thou. Doesn't resonate with my belief system, but people should do what they think is right. >> But I just love how you said it. We shouldn't hold the organizers of the festival beholding to the actions of the government, assuming those aren't the same people. Now, if you do find out, hypothetically speaking, that the the prince that was responsible for getting the journalist killed is the person that decided to throw the comedy festival. >> the crazy thing. If you said, "Listen, MBS wants to meet with you," I would do it a thousand percent. Mhm. A thousand percent. And we can just assume he is the guy wiping the blood off of his bone saw. But when I think about how important the Middle East is going to be moving forward. They're going to be the hub of investment dollars. I think it's something like seven of the biggest investment houses are in the Middle East. Man, we should be looking for ways to partner, join each other in the 21st century to put that kind of stuff behind us. So, MBS strikes me as a very important figure. And again, I think that when you hear Dave Smith talk about Barack Obama, he's not wrong. And he's like, Barack Obama is a murderer. He killed all these people with drone strikes and all that. And I'm like, yeah. But if Barack was like, Tom, I really want to talk with you about the future of America, would you do it? Yes. Yes, I would, very much. It is a region of my brain where I'm like, this is how the world works. Leaders may not kill with their bare hands, but they kill a lot of people. If we don't understand that this is how the world works and that you both want to call out when it's like, hey, we don't want to do that. At the same time that you don't go like Momdami is saying, I'm going to arrest Netanyahu if he comes to New York. It's like, that that's stupid. So, you want to find ways to invite these countries into the 21st century. You want to find a way to bring them closer to your values and not isolate them. That would be my take. Where is that balance between this could be a bridge for the future versus this is evil? >> I'm going to keep killing your journalist, but I would like to invite a bunch of journalists over. Then I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I wouldn't expect anybody to go. That would be wild. But he's not. And obviously, there's like evidence and all that that he was involved and blah, blah, blah. What's going to be the thing that you draw the line on? Is it that they did a thing ever that we think is morally um repugnant? In which case, Trump's got to go. Uh Biden's got to go. Obama's got to go. Clinton's got to go. Like, you literally just run down the list of American leaders all the way to back to Washington's got to go. Like, as far as I understand, Washington had slave teeth in his own mouth. Okay? He pulled the teeth. Somebody fact-check me if I'm wrong. But he had dentures that were made from like, I think some horses' teeth, uh some wood if I remember right, and then some slave teeth. That's horrific. So, but at the same time, when he had the opportunity to become dictator for life of America, he didn't do it. Yeah, I'm not going to throw him out with the bathwater. I'm not going to say his face needs to be taken off Mount Rushmore. When I teach that in schools, I'm going to say, listen, despicable things were done, but we are not going to focus on that. What we need to focus on is what makes this country great. What are the values that we want to embrace? And it is absolutely antithetical to moving forward well to say that we're evil or the product of evil or it it doesn't even matter if it's factual. It just matters that it's not useful moving forward. Same thing. If the Middle East is going to transition off of oil and get into tech, get into biotech investments, get into entertainment, whatever, and they're going to be a driving force there, we want to have good relationships with them. Yes, there needs to be pressure. You can't like, if they killed the journalist now and we're like, okay, we just did that thing and now we're inviting everybody over, I'd be like, yo, this is way freakish. Just to like make sure they understand, I think that that's a non-starter. I'm not going. Cuz if they did some atrocity right now, I'd be like, no [ __ ] way. All of that factors into as people build their belief system about how do we approach the world? For instance, should we have invited Putin into a negotiation? Obviously. But he's killing Ukrainians. Yes. You you have to find an off-ramp. You've got to treat this guy like a human, even though you think he may be committing war crimes. Same with Bibi Netanyahu. Same with Hamas. Same with Palestine. It's like, you've got to find a way to work with these people. In fact, there's an image of a guy that's in the Is he in the UN? He's in the UN or something like that where there's footage of him holding two capitated heads. And he's now in a leadership position in the world. I saw Somebody's going to know. Chat, please rescue me here. What do you do with that? Well, if he's in a position of leadership, you got to deal with him. This is one of those where, yes, like when Trump brought the South African leader into the White House, you say, bro, you've got farmers being killed. You guys are moving in the wrong direction. We've got to address it. But you don't go, they're despicable. We'll never speak to them.