Should Disney purchase EA?

Monopolies are bad. In theory, capitalist markets are meant to self-regulate to ensure they don’t come about, but in practice, they’re an inevitability that requires state intervention to prevent. Disney, one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, is looking to expand its reach and become a “gaming giant,” perhaps by acquiring EA. But this would be bad for players and EA workers.

Disney owns an absurd amount of IP. Not only can it pull from the classic animated movies we all grew up with, but it also has access to many of Fox and Marvel’s properties, which include the likes of Alien, The Simpsons, and the MCU. At the moment, Alien and Marvel games are made by a wide range of studios, meaning we, the players, get a regular, diverse mix of games to play. If EA is the only studio making all of Disney’s games, we’ll barely get any.

Triple-A video games keep taking longer to make. Just look at Rockstar. It took just two years to go from GTA Vice City to San Andreas, but then five years between GTA 4 and 5, and now it’s been 10 years and we still haven’t gotten any official look at 6. It’s not sustainable for one company to make projects that take this long.

Ten years is an absurdly long time for a creative to spend on a single project. I know video games are developed in stages, with more developers being brought on as the game progresses, but even if the commitment is half that time, five years, that’s still longer than most movies take to make. Having one dedicated studio to turn all its IP into games will mean we barely get any.

EA used to be the company that made all the Star Wars games, but after some missteps (read, predatory monetization), Disney made the wise choice to let other studios have a crack. Unfortunately, this now means we’ve got Quantic Dream developing Eclipse, but hey ho, we can’t just have wins. If Disney goes back to EA, its other projects will no doubt be affected.

As we’ve seen with companies like Toys For Bob, once they get acquired by industry giants, they get turned into support studios. Why are the developers of Crash 4 now making skins for CoD? It makes Activision more money, that’s why. If Disney buys EA, you can kiss goodbye to the sports games and shooters, or any interesting games from studios under EA’s umbrella. It’ll just be games made by a Disney-appointed committee that get developed.

On top of all that, acquisitions lead to layoffs. Developers will get made redundant. Will Disney need EA’s HR or marketing teams? It will look to streamline to make the buy as profitable as possible as quickly as possible.

2023 has been a terrible year for workers in the video game industry. We’ve seen thousands of staff laid off, a lawsuit brought against Bungie for alleged wrongful termination, and games canceled. Let’s not make it even worse by consolidating companies even more.