EA Alleges It Will “Retain Creative Control” After Saudi Deal Despite Evidence To Contrary

By Elijah Gonzalez | November 4, 2025 | 11:30am

Video Games News Electronic Arts

EA Alleges It Will “Retain Creative Control” After Saudi Deal Despite Evidence To Contrary

In late September, we received the bombshell news that the Saudi Arabian government’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) aimed to co-acquire publisher Electronic Arts in a deal alongside investment firm Silver Lake and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners.

In an attempt to quell concerns over the acquisition, EA provided an internal company FAQ to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. In the document, they state that the company will “maintain creative control” over their business. Specifically, the full list of answers to the question “Will our culture change as a result of this deal?” is as follows:

“Our mission, values, and commitment to players and fans around the world remain unchanged.

We will continue to be guided by our cultural values of creativity, pioneering, passion, determination, learning, and teamwork.

The Consortium is supportive of and committed to investing in our exceptional employees and our strong culture.

The Consortium believes in our vision, our leadership and the strength of our teams. They are investing in EA because they believe we are uniquely positioned to lead the future of entertainment.

EA will maintain creative control and our track record of creative freedom and player-first values will remain intact.”

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Beyond this, the company offers many other promises: EA’s HQ will remain in Redwood City, CA. Andrew Wilson will remain CEO, and the rest of the executive team will remain intact. This deal won’t lead to layoffs. Lastly, the expectation is that the acquisition will close in the next six to nine months—this one is probably the most likely to be true, given the Trump administration’s close ties to both Jared Kushner and the Saudi government (the same day this deal was announced, the Trump Organization revealed it was launching a Trump Plaza in the Saudi city of Jeddah).

However, despite EA’s assertions over its creative independence, we’ve already seen a case of the PIF seemingly directly influencing a game company that they invested in: after acquiring a 96% stake in SNK, the publisher’s Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves included several otherwise nonsensical guest characters whose inclusion only makes sense in the context of their ties to the PIF. Instead of including additional characters from SNK’s long-standing roster of fighters, it added controversial real-world soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo and Bosnian-Swedish DJ Salvatore Ganacci—Ronaldo plays for a PIF-owned soccer team and Ganacci has done several shows in Saudi Arabia.

While EA is a company with many, many problems, it has at least attempted to include LGBTQ+ representation in several of its series, like The Sims. Among other human rights abuses, the Saudi Arabian government (which again, directly owns the PIF) has draconian laws that persecute queer people, making many skeptical that EA will continue to include this representation in their games.

Honestly, Jared Kushner’s influence probably will not help in that regard either, and it’s easy to imagine the president’s son-in-law using the company to further the asinine culture war the Trump administration is currently waging through gaming memes.