“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.”
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.