Players Alliance Says "The Sims Doesn't Need EA, EA Needs The Sims"

There has never been a worse time to be into video games, just as there’s never been a worse time to make them. The advent of generative AI has signalled a new gold rush - in the form of a race to the bottom for working conditions and artistic merit.

Workers from around the world have responded through their unions, and now, we’re starting to see some solidarity between them and the people who play their games.

Enter the Players Alliance. This gamers' union has made it its mission to block the upcoming $55 billion EA acquisition by a controversial consortium of investors, seeing this as just another example of everything wrong with the gaming industry. But as I speak to one of their members, Polly, it becomes clear that the union’s concerns - and ambitions - go much deeper than that.

“We had a lot of people who were getting really frustrated with the direction that the video game industry is headed,” Polly tells me. “We're heading toward more private equity coming in, giving us a worse product for more money. Exploiting us, not paying workers, replacing people with robots - just every kind of horrible thing that you can imagine they could do to line their pockets; that's what they're doing. We decided that we were sick of it.”

This is nothing new for the gaming industry, but there’s no doubt that it’s grown significantly worse in recent years. So, when the news broke that EA was going to be acquired by three different investors - including investment groups linked to Jared Kushner (Donald Trump’s son-in-law) and the Saudi Arabian royal family - Polly knew they had to do something.

“The EA deal was so immensely unpopular, so rife with conflict of interest and international security violations,” Polly tells me. “It's just one of the skeeviest and grossest deals that you've ever seen, and that's what's really driven our anger.”

What Will This Deal Mean For EA?

There are so many aspects of the deal you could take potential issue with. Will the investors’links to governmentswithregressive social policiesprevent EA from publishing games with LGBTQ+ content? Will the huge buyout mean that workers will be laid off? Will the tech bros involved in all of this push harder for AI?

As far as Polly is concerned, these issues are part of the same struggle. “All of the concerns that you mentioned, they all really lump under the idea of monopolisation,” they tell me. “We don't believe that one company should have this much power. This is $55 billion. The projected annual income for the entire gaming industry as a whole is a little over $200 billion. So, this one deal is like a quarter of the entire gaming industry's revenue for a year. That's insanity.”

In this battle, the Players Alliance is on the same side as the workers. Through a statement, the United Videogame Workers-CWA union also expressed their concerns with the deal to us.

"Decisions that shape our jobs, our art, and our futures are made behind closed doors by executives who have never written a line of code, built worlds, or supported live services."

“EA is not a struggling company,” the statement reads. “With annual revenues reaching $7.5 billion and $1 billion in profit each year, EA is one of the largest video game developers and publishers in the world. EA’s success has been entirely driven by tens of thousands of EA workers whose creativity, skill, and innovation made EA worth buying in the first place.

“Yet we, the very people who will be jeopardised as a result of this deal, were not represented at all when this buyout was negotiated or discussed.”

They are also worried about how this will impact day-to-day life at EA. “Every time private equity or billionaire investors take a studio private, workers lose visibility, transparency, and power,” the union says. “Decisions that shape our jobs, our art, and our futures are made behind closed doors by executives who have never written a line of code, built worlds, or supported live services.”

But regarding LGBTQ+ content in particular, Polly wonders why the likes of Jared Kushner and the Saudi Arabian royal family are sniffing around in the first place. “If you hate us so much, why are you buying our media?”

When details of the deal were first shared, fans of The Sims and BioWare games were among the most vocal to speak out against it. This is because these communities are full of queer people, and these games have been at the forefront of queer representation in the gaming industry for decades now.

EA seemed to respond to this by saying thatits “values” would remain unchanged. Polly, however, isn’t convinced that this is a promise to EA’s LGBTQ+ player base.

“If you read the PR messages, they never say that cultural influences won't change,” says Polly. “EA's values are money. I want to be very clear about that. Trust me, their value for money is not going to change.”

What Can The Players Alliance Actually Do?

The obvious question to ask is what the Players Alliance can do?

Polly has clearly thought about this a lot and believes their greatest asset is that the mechanisms they can use to improve the industry already exist - they’re just not being enforced.

“In an ideal world, the deal would fall through,” Polly says. “It's so obviously corrupt and so obviously predatory and destructive and unsafe that it should be struck down by the regulators in multiple different countries, but we're in a time where what does regulation mean if it challenges rich people, right?

“There's no enforcement mechanism that is actually functional. Everything has been gutted at this point.”

Polly is also drawing upon a rich history of organisation efforts across different media. “I use the analogy of the film industry back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, where they were getting really frustrated with the way that these owners were treating actors, actresses and writers,” Polly says. “They decided to unionise and form things like SAG-AFTRA and the WGA. Those are the kinds of moves that we want to make as the Players Alliance.”

The organisers have their own experience to draw upon as well. Polly has prior experience in tenant union work, and that is actually how they came to know some of their Players Alliance comrades.

Players Alliance is also teaming up with groups that have similar aims and have made some real, tangible progress already. “You have Stop Killing Games, which, right now, has bills going through in the UK and in the United States. We also have the Video Game Workers of America that we direct people to if they are workers looking to unionise.”

Polly says this is essential in making sure they are taking on EA in every way that they can. “[We’re] challenging it from a legal standpoint, from a worker union standpoint, from a consumer union standpoint. We are taking on mostly the consumer union standpoint and trying to be a uniting force, so that we are all walking in lockstep with one another.”

Once again, the union shares these sentiments, saying that regulators must “scrutinise this deal and ensure that any path forward protects jobs, preserves creative freedom, and keeps decision-making accountable to the workers who make EA successful.”

“The Sims does not need EA. EA needs The Sims.”

The Players Alliance isn’t just keeping its campaigning online either. I ask if EA is aware of their existence, and Polly says they must be - because it spent a whole lot of money trying to block their in-person protest at EA’s HQ in Redwood City, Californiaback in May.

“When we showed up to Redwood City, we were admittedly a little ambiguous about what we were going to do,” they tell me. “We were just going to show up. We weren't going to break things, we weren't going to go into anywhere.”

Still, EA responded. “They walled off a giant portion of the campus with those rented barriers,” they recall. “They had to have spent 1,000s of dollars to do this, by the way, for the amount of security that they had standing out there staring at us, and the metal bars that they had circling us. So, they know. They are fully aware.”

And while this might not be a traditional framework for community organising, the passion of The Sims community is an incredibly effective tool in the Players Alliance’s arsenal. In fact, Polly is confident that getting them involved is what will really make EA listen.

“The Sims themselves do not really need EA,” Polly says. “They needed EA right at the beginning, right at that moment where they needed to get themselves off the ground, but they haven't really needed EA since. EA needs them. I think that's the big thing that [EA] is panicking over when it comes to like the consumer reaction.

“The Sims does not need EA. EA needs The Sims. Maxis does not need EA. EA needs Maxis.”

What The Acquisition Could Mean For The Sims

We touch more on The Sims community specifically. I ask what they expect from the acquisition, and the answer is simple - more of the bad practices they’re already seeing.

“This is not new behaviour for EA, this is just like the ultimate form we eventually knew they were going to take,” Polly tells me. “They're already talking layoffs, and the deal hasn't even gone through yet. And they're already talking about AI integration to replace jobs.”

More specifically, Polly says that The Sims Marketplace shows us the direction EA will continue to take the series in. This was pitched as a way forThe Sims modders to monetise their work(with a 30/70 split - in favour of EA). Polly worries that it’s exploiting what has traditionally been a hobby done for the love of the game - and exploiting developers by replacing them with cheap fan-made labour.

"This EA deal is actively in the process of killing The Sims.”

“They tricked creators into what we would call scabbing to circumvent their cuts,” Polly argues. “[EA is] not rehiring people who create textures, people who create models. They're not rehiring them because now they have these creators that are going to do that for them.

“How many of the people who put their heart and soul into creating this game are still going to have a voice in The Sims going forward? It's pretty clear that we're not going to have expansion packs anymore, and we have this new evolution of The Sims franchise - what does that mean if you're replacing all of that with AI and working people to the bone?”

While this is all taking place before the deal goes through, Polly only sees it getting worse from here. “This EA deal is actively in the process of killing The Sims,” they say. “As a consumer, I cannot in good conscience put my money toward lining the pockets of people like Jared Kushner and the Saudi Arabian monarchy.”

Ultimately, that is what it all boils down to for the Players Alliance - who will lead its future?

“This is our industry,” Polly concludes. “This isn't Jared Kushner's industry. This isn't the Saudi Arabia [royal family’s] industry. This is our industry. We're the ones who built it, and we're the ones who deserve to have a say over it. And if they don't let us have a say, then we will take the industry back.”

While these are powerful opponents, Polly still believes there is strength in numbers. “Let's say, you're an absolute monarchy, like the Saudi Arabian monarchy. You are one person or one entity, and you can only be one voice,” they say. “We have the benefit of having multiple different voices, thousands upon thousands upon thousands, and this one petition alone that we got together in three months got 73,000 signatures. We have the potential to be so many more voices than they are.”

Right now, the EA deal is still seeking regulator approval. The future of the $55 billion deal is in the hands of regulators - and the groups trying to stop it.

EA has been contacted for comment.

EA