One thing we always try to do here on BSO is keep it authentic and a buck, at the same time. Sometimes that means we have to call out bad actors or ideologies that infect our favorite hobbies and pastimes. Even when you want to keep the politics out of things, they have a funny way of inserting themselves into the conversation, whether you want them there or not. You might be wondering how politics can insert itself into a conversation. Well, I am happy to explain how that happens using a current topic.
The recent announcement of the purchase of EA by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, and Silver Lake is a perfect example of how politics can infect video games in a major way. But before we break down why EA’s sale to Saudi Arabia, Kushner, and Silver Lake is a huge blow to the integrity of gaming, it’s important to understand how we even got here in the first place. To do that, we have to start with politics first.
Saudi Arabia earned its reputation via numerous human rights violations, but the thing that finally pushed many Americans over the edge was the kidnapping and murder of a US-based reporter by the name of Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi was employed by The Washington Post, and he was at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain documents for his upcoming wedding, only to be killed and dismembered inside the consulate on the direct orders of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Since then, Saudi Arabia has used numerous different avenues of sportswashing to gain positive coverage. The biggest example was the signing of Cristiano Ronaldo to Al-Nassr for a small fortune. They have also partnered with the WWE to create a title called the Crown Jewel, which is also the name of the Premium Live Event associated with the title, and most recently, it was announced that the WWE will host its flagship PLE, WrestleMania 43, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In fact, the EA purchase isn’t even Saudi Arabia’s first foray into gaming, nor is it the first big name they’ve purchased.
Cast your mind back to 2022. Morbius is tearing up the box office. The Batman shows a slower, more methodical version of the Dark Knight.”Anti-Hero” by Taylor Swift and “About Damn Time” by Lizzo are currently all over the airwaves. It’s late April, and word begins to spread that the GOATED Japanese video game developer SNK has been purchased. Word soon comes out that the PIF and its subsidiary, the Mohammed bin Salman Foundation, have acquired 96% of SNK, obviously making them the full owner.
SNK immediately got to work trying to rebuild the brand, and journalists immediately got to work clowning the purchase and stating they would refuse to review their games. A few outlets went even further than that, calling out the purchase for the entertainment-washing that it was. The gaming outlet Kotaku was one of the most vociferous on the subject, releasing an article aptly titled “One of the Worst People in the World Now Owns Over 96% of SNK.”
The first thing SNK did was release a new game in the Fatal Fury franchise, which was always one of SNK’s most popular fighters, if not the most popular. The game would eventually titled Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. The game is a conclusion of the one that began in Garou: Mark of the Wolves back in 1999. SNK even partnered with huge names for DLC, like Capcom. There will be more on that later. SNK even made sure the game was created just for the fighting community, meaning the barrier to entry was pretty large. No matter what SNK did to hype the game, none of it had any effect, and the game was ultimately released to an indifferent audience.
In an attempt to claw back gamers, SNK partnered with Capcom to bring over their most popular fighter in the current environment, Ken Masters. If SNK thought that having a character from Street Fighter 6 would improve their engagement metrics, they were deeply misinformed. Realizing that SNK wasn’t a big enough name for Saudi Arabia to have the impact they wanted to have in gaming, they’ve instead targeted a much, much, much bigger company in EA. Now they’re going to do the same stuff, just with titles like Madden, EA College Football, EA FC, Battlefield, The Sims, and many more.
This absolutely sucks for me to say, but I will no longer be buying EA games following Battlefield 6. Why am I buying a game if I supposedly have these morals? In this case, it’s really simple; Battlefield 6 was made with zero involvement from Saudi Arabia. The game was put into development long before the PIF and MBS were involved, and it just happens to be releasing after the purchase. I’m not going to punish those devs and workers because they just happened to have made a game for a company that was purchased by a controversial figure.
That said, I will not be purchasing their products going forward. I will not allow Saudi Arabia to feel like they can kill American residents and then entertain that out of my brain. There are many well-sourced and well-written articles on why sportswashing is harmful, and I’m going to link to those writers before wrapping up here today. I think it’s important to share information on the subject and not just say “this person is bad because I said so.”
I want to provide context and meaning behind my actions. The best way to do that is to provide you with a list of well-written articles by people much, much smarter than I am on these subjects. I’ll drop a few of them below this paragraph, and then I will wrap up with my thoughts and what I think will ultimately happen with EA when the dust settles. I encourage you to read as many of these as you can so you can fully understand the gravity of the situation. This isn’t as simple as them killing just one guy. It’s much deeper and much worse than that.
- More Than Money: The Geopolitics Behind Saudi Arabia’s Sports Strategy by Aaron Ettinger for the Carleton Newsroom.
- Saudi Arabia and Sportswashing by Luke Brown for the New York Times via The Athletic
- A Timeline of Saudi Arabia’s Unprecedented Sports Investments by ESPN Staff for ESPN
- Saudi Arabia Uses European Football to Sportswash Its Reputation by Claudio Francavilla for Human Rights Watch
- Revealed: Saudi Arabia’s $6bn spend on ‘sportswashing’ by Ruth Michaelson for The Guardian
As you can see, there’s a lot to unpack, and there’s no easy answer for why any of this has been allowed to happen. Ultimately, the Saudis have a metric shitload of money that they can spend, and they’re going to continue to do stuff like this. They’re one of the few countries that can throw ungodly sums of money at entertainers, and they will come, even if they used to have ethics about not going. I’m looking right at you, CM Punk and Bill Burr. The only thing you can really do is vote with your wallet, and that’s what I’m going to do. How about you?
