EA went private at the start of the month, bought for around $55 billion by a group made up of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners and Silver Lake. That's the biggest leveraged buyout in history. Deals that size come with debt, and debt comes with a bill.
The number that matters
Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, posting on Bluesky, reports EA has told its debt investors it plans to cut $700 million in annual costs, including $170 million in what the company files as "organizational efficiencies." That last phrase almost never means better spreadsheets. It means people. When a firm this size promises creditors nine figures of "efficiencies," layoffs are usually how the maths works out.
This isn't the first round
EA cut staff three separate times in 2026 before the deal even closed, in February, March and June. The June round hit customer support, the trust-and-safety teams that police online lobbies, IT and recruitment, the kind of quiet, unglamorous roles that keep live games running. Doing that before taking on buyout debt, then lining up $700 million more, tells you the direction of travel.
None of this is unique to EA. It's the same squeeze that left Xbox's divested studios hunting for buyers, and that has Bethesda devs calling yearly layoffs the new normal. The difference is scale: EA now has a debt load to service, and the people who make the games are the line item that moves first. We'll be watching where the axe actually falls.
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