Savvy Games Group

This post is short in detail, but the broad gist of the whole thing cuts in consideration aren't entirely surprising given the company's recent acquisition by Saudi Arabia, which saddled it with $20 billion in debt and owners not known for their liberal mindset.

Plans for massive cuts were reported in early August and a possible merger with Saudi-owned Savvy Games Group has also been rumoured, but former Bioware lead writer Patrick Weeks made the call more than a year ago when EA acquisitions first happened, predicting that guns and football games would be fine, but

the quote-unquote gay stuff would be out.

So, fuck.

It's a catch-up episode.

When I first spoke to Patrick, he was Global Group Treasurer at Savvy Games Group.

Since then, he's moved on from gaming into pharmaceuticals, and now he's pulling together companies that a sovereign wealth fund bought in parts, each with its own banks, systems, and processes.

Tell you what, have a quick listen to some of the highlights.

Each and every week, I talk to Treasurers about how they build their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the Treasury profession going to next.

Let's get on with the show.

In this week's show, I'm joined by Patrick Peters-Bühler, the Global Group Treasurer and Senior Vice President of Savvy Games Group.

Savvy Games is a games and esports company formed with a mission to drive the long-term growth and development of esports and broader games industry worldwide.

The cuts aren't entirely surprising given the company's recent acquisition by Saudi Arabia, which saddled it with $20 billion in debt and owners not known for their liberal mindset.

Plans for massive cuts were reported in early August, and a possible merger with Saudi-owned Savvy Games Group has also been rumored.

But former BioWare lead writer Patrick Weeks made the call more than a year ago when the EA acquisition first happened, predicting that guns and football games would be fine, but gay stuff would be out.

Weeks appears to have been spot on as the company's report points to plans for more Battlefield, more Apex Legends, and a full commitment to EA Sports FC, plus a new American football game creatively codenamed Project Gridiron, and Fight Night is coming back.

Mala Singh, Jacob Schatz, $24.6 million each.

We spoke to one EA mobile insider when this deal was done and they were pretty bullish about it all saying that it will allow EA to invest properly in user acquisition for its games monetize a little bit harder and so on and pointed to the example set by another Saudi investment Scopely which is now owned by Savvy Games Group and later went on to acquire, of course, Niantic's gaming portfolio including Pokemon Go, Monster Hunter Now, Pikmin Bloom and so on.

So yes, cut to EA.

Maybe not a surprise, but still very sad.

But I do think that maybe we can start with some of the foreign investment funds that are coming into play here.

You talked about EA earlier and the Saudi government's PIF, and I think it's actually Savvy Games Group is what they're called, has pretty much taken electronic arts off of the public traded market and has gone completely private.

SNK as well, I believe.

Oh, that is correct.

And they've been getting involved in this for quite a while.

And I think some of...

Well, okay, maybe before we get into Savvy Games Group, I think we should talk about... tangibly what's going to happen with this paramount Warner brothers merger when it comes to games.

And I think a lot of that is currently unknown.