this outlines how EA has just been bought out by a pretty conservative group of private investors and how she's worried about the future of an inclusive game like The Sims

https://simscommunity.in... here's another article about the concerns

this is... honestly kind of nuts?? not many studios go from public to private, but even aside from that EA is a massive company

I'm sure these investors will care more about the sports games that EA makes but this is still... really bad in general I feel like

closes eyes

every time i think ea cannot disappoint me more than they already have, i am proven wrong

like y'all thought Microsoft buying Activision-Blizzard was bad? this has so much more potential to be worse

LOL right.... EA just keeps digging itself lower and lower

and now it means buying any game that EA makes will be putting money into the pockets of, checks notes, Saudi Arabia and Jared Kushner

not to mention that "Insider report claims that EA’s new investors are betting into AI technology for maximizing profit." https://simscommunity.in...

i swear, it's like their superpower

this really is so concerning though and so frustrating

seriously... and the Sims is the only EA franchise I remotely care about. even so it would be nuts if this is the last Sims game that is inclusive. the notion sounds so wildly out there that if someone had told me that last week I would've said that was a conspiracy theory

because the Sims has always been about doing whatever the hell you want, and the team has been very good about both minority and LGBTQIA+ inclusion too... but now????

EA had also intended to make this current version of the Sims capable of just upgrading forever instead of releasing any new ones, so uhhh

what would censorship of the Sims even look like? would they just restrict what's possible in Project Rene or go as far as to tear it all out of the Sims 4?

either way it would destroy the game's fanbase. because the fanbase is mostly women and from where I'm sitting has always been pretty progressive

I definitely want to see what gaming industry professionals think of all of this in regards to the Sims specifically, because whoof

yeah i dont usually watch her streams but i happened to have it on last night and. it dont feel great hearing this

it sure doesn't... I know as players we've had gripes with the game and EA in general for a while, but that doesn't mean anyone wants to see the Sims gutted

i'm sure their focus is FIFA but i hope the other studios are able to keep doing their thing

how do we give some other game company custody of the sims

I saw people in the comments of that post hoping that they'll just sell off the Sims to another company... and it's a possibility, it does sound like EA is pretty in debt

and honestly any company would be better than EA LOL

you're spot on too... a big chunk of the sims' appeal has always largely been that it's so progressive, which made it inclusive in a way that is hard to find, in addition to being a fun casual game so once you start gutting it, it loses all its appeal.

yeeeep. honestly I do hope they sell the franchise just so they won't have to fuck with it

It would be nice if they ended up selling all their franchises anyone cares about to focus on Sports. But honestly I feel like it’s EA and a bunch of VC jerkoffs so they’re more likely to kill them

the Sims does make a lot of money though and it's hard to imagine they'd shut down a valuable IP on purpose. but a misguided attempt to turn it into a tradwife simulator? that seems more likely

any relatively small studios in EA are absolutely in danger though

(christ what does this mean for Bioware...)

EA's takeover, the Saudi Arabian Public Investment F...

"EA's takeover, the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, and "vanity mega projects": Human Rights Watch assesses the impact of gaming's latest controversy"