“The proposed transaction poses a number of significant foreign influence and national security risks, beginning with the PIF’s reputation as a strategic arm of the Saudi government,” the Senators wrote in their letter. “As Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the PIF has made dozens of strategic investments in sports (including a bid for the U.S. PGA Tour), video games (including a $3.3 billion investment in Activision Blizzard), and other cultural institutions that ‘are more than just about financial returns; they are about influence.’ Leveraging long term shifts in public opinion, through the PIF’s investments, ‘Saudi Arabia is seeking to normalize its global image, expand its cultural reach, and gain leverage in spaces that shape how billions of people connect and interact.’ Saudi Arabia’s desire to buy influence through the acquisition of EA is apparent on the face of the transaction—the investors propose to pay more than $10 billion above EA’s trading value for a company whose stock has ‘stagnated for half a decade’ in an unpredictably volatile industry.”
Corrupt foreign influence is everywhere just add it to the pile of bs
In this thread: bullshit and whataboutism.
as opposed to the us influencing people?
give me a break
Yeah but it’s propaganda when other people do it.
I can’t wait for Battlefield: Portland
So many cool maps:
The zoo - elephant alley
Tunnels - traffic on 26
Bridges - because fuck colored/poor people
Happy valley - not if you’re poor
Lake Oswego - no one’s in my backyard
Skyline - also no one in my backyard
Traffic - the i84 simulator
Tram - light rail showing up every 30 minutes
And I’m out of ideas.
I can’t wait to collect inflatable suit skins
I’d play that
Well, we don’t live in a bubble. Countries are going to influence people.
the national security risks raised by the Saudi government’s access to and unchecked influence over the sensitive personal information collected from EA’s millions of users
If you don’t like that, then maybe tamp down on what game publishers are legally allowed to harvest, and restrict what data can be obtained on various platforms, and what can be accessed. It’s not as if other game publishers isolate that data from foreign countries; they can sell data or be purchased for their data. China’s TenCent bought Oxygen Not Included a while back, and I’d be more-concerned about national security regarding China than Saudi Arabia. 2C is a Russian publisher that publishes some major milsim games. The Russian state seized control of Lesta Group, the World of Tanks publisher, a while back. Steam games don’t normally run in isolation (outside something like flatpak on Linux, which provides a limited amount of isolation). If their software is on your PC, they have read and write access to the data on your PC.
I am an active World of Tanks player and Russia did not seize the World of Tanks publisher which is Wargaming. World of Tanks has a bunch of servers: EU, NA, ASIA, and RU. Each server is independent of the other, so if you play on EU, you don’t meet accounts made on NA, for example.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Wargaming decided to leave Russia, giving players who were on that server a chance to migrate their accounts to European servers. Lesta took over the Russian servers, and for all practical purposes, develop the Russian version of World of Tanks independently. Wargaming still is the developer of the other servers. Neither have anything to do with each other anymore.
But I do agree with the overall point of your post. Please look up who owns and has stakes in the publishers of the games you are interested in, folks.
Ah, thanks for the clarification on Lesta.
I mean…
The US military has been using various media like videogames for propaganda for a long time.
Obviously SA is going to influence things too.
Remember this gem?
And Hollywood
And yet, nobody is talking about the ever expanding cultural influence of Larry Ellison.
Just look at the list of assets he currently owns. Add to that his recent purchase of TikTok and very likely purchase of Warner Bothers Discovery, and you have a sizeable chunk of the world’s media under the control of a singularly dangerous man.
“Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on,” Ellison said, describing what he sees as the benefits from automated oversight from AI and automated alerts for when crime takes place. “We’re going to have supervision,” he continued. “Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times, and if there’s a problem, AI will report the problem and report it to the appropriate person.”
I can think of a dozen stupid half-baked jokes about what their future games will be like, off the top of my head.
But seriously. I do not want this regressive and oppressive state to have so much influence in the world. Influence of oil is more than enough.
Why can’t China own tik tok but this is ok?
Because that helped show how terrible the empire is to those in the usa
They were forced to sell TikTok’s operations in the US.
Oil and money
They’re worried about a video game but not a Qatari air base in Idaho. Priorities.
I’m personally worried about both. EA is clowned on a lot, but plenty of people still play their games.
Americans are worried about China while Saudi Arabia buys up all of their companies.
This is like worrying about Japanese investors buying a stadium, the article is very misleading because they would never employ writers who would explain why the US benefits from the global ruling class recycling its dollars into asset markets here. Basically, there is nowhere else to put it that won’t get left behind by the bubble and devalued.
This isn’t Saudi Arabia buying the USA. This is one of the USA’s dogs getting a bone to chew on. Same with Qatar. Don’t be so shortsighted.
But yes, China isn’t a threat to Americans. They literally want the quality of life of Americans to go up, and the financial leverage of the US to go down. The main thing stopping Americans from living a good life is the financial leverage of their middle class and elites. (Most private equity funds are managing retirements and pensions, which most workers do not have. Same deal with housing.)
They don’t even need to use ea for obvious propaganda. They’ll just harvest all of the data that gamers are willingly turning over to ea and use that to sell targeted ads and influence them via social media. If you’re playing one of the recent battlefield games then EA has access to literally every single file on your computer that’s not encrypted (unless you open it). Gamers give up all of their data willingly and that’s what this acquisition is about.
At this point, would we be comfortable with the influence of any group or individual with enough money, and desire, to buy EA?
Don’t worry, they will bride and use people to destroy your already half destroyed country! Happens to all countries.
Don’t worry, they will bride and use people
Typo of the year
