“EA Sports, it’s in the game.” Sound familiar?
The publicly traded video game company Electronic Arts is now closing in on a nearly $50 billion deal to become a privately held company, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Investors including private-equity firms Silver Lake, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Jared Kushner‘s Affinity Partners are in talks with the maker of The Sims and other beloved franchises to take the company private, the newspaper noted on Friday, September 26.
If the deal goes through, it would like be the biggest leveraged buyout in history based on EA’s current $48.38 billion market cap, according to WSJ.
EA is led by CEO Andrew Wilson, with its current biggest priority being the upcoming wide release of Battlefield 6 on October 10, according to Variety. Its vast catalog of game franchises also includes:
- Skate
- EA Sports FC (rebranded from FIFA)
- Apex Legends
- The Sims
- EA Sports
- Madden NFL
- EA Sports College Football
- Need for Speed
The Sims marked its 25th birthday on February 4, 2025. It is one of the bestselling video game series of all time, with nearly 200 million copies sold worldwide. There have been four mainline games released: The Sims, The Sims 2, The Sims 3 and The Sims 4 — along with the many expansion packs, as gamers are well aware.
Last year, EA announced that The Sims franchise will be turned into a movie.
“The Hollywood rumors are true!” the game publisher stated in a press release at the time. “We’re VERY excited to share that in partnership with Amazon MGM Studios, our team is working on a film based on The Sims.“
Cast details on The Sims film haven’t been made public, but it’s been announced that LuckyChap, Margot Robbie‘s production company, is attached to the project. On a similar note, Robbie, 35, produced and starred in the commercially successful and critically acclaimed Barbie movie from 2023.
