EA's new Saudi owners are weighing a merger with Savvy Games Group

Just over a month after Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund completed its $55 billion buyout of EA, Bloomberg reports the PIF is now considering merging EA with its existing gaming arm, Savvy Games Group. The goal would be a single unified entity to handle all of the Saudi wealth fund's video game investments going forward.

No decision has been made yet, and timing is complicated by Savvy's ongoing $6 billion acquisition of Chinese mobile game developer and publisher Moonton — so any EA/Savvy merger isn't imminent. Any deal would also need antitrust clearance, just as the original EA buyout did. Bloomberg suggests that folding EA into Savvy could push the company harder into mobile gaming, a space EA has historically treated as secondary to its console and PC business.

The merger talk lands on top of already serious concerns inside EA. Staff have long worried that the leveraged buyout structure — which loads the acquired company with debt it must service from its own revenue — creates strong financial pressure to slash costs aggressively. Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard is the obvious recent comparison: that deal ultimately resulted in nearly two thousand layoffs. EA employees have also raised concerns about creative interference, with one anonymous staffer telling Game Developer last month that Saudi government preferences could quietly shape which projects get greenlit — not through explicit directives, but through self-censorship and anticipatory catering to ownership. Amnesty International has documented Saudi Arabia's human rights record as deeply troubling, and that context hasn't been lost on EA's workforce.

For now, the merger remains speculative — Bloomberg frames it as something execs are weighing, not a done deal. But the combination of a potential Savvy tie-up, the debt-heavy buyout structure, and ongoing staff anxiety means the picture at EA is unlikely to get clearer anytime soon.