Back in September, we heard the news that EA was officially being sold. The company would be bought up in the largest cash deal in history, being purchased by a consortium led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund or PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners. This deal still had a few kinks to be ironed out earlier in the year, but now it has official approval from EA's shareholders.
That's according to Game File's Stephen Totilo, who reported that last night at around 22:00 GMT/23:00 CET the sale was approved to the tune of $55 billion. That's a big win for the deal, but even if it looks set to go through, it'll next have to be approved by government regulators.
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As we know from past experience with big gaming deals, these can take time to be approved. Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard was in the courts for a while, but one could argue that was mostly because of Sony not wanting the Xbox maker to have control over the key gaming franchise that is Call of Duty. EA will continue to make games for every platform, we'd imagine, and now the precedent has been set that these deals can be approved by governments, it seems like the EA deal will likely pass. The only problem may be in regards to the PIF leading the consortium, as this could involve more scrutiny provided from Western government regulators.