[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_of_Nestl%C3%A9
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiquita#Criticism
And they sit on a lot of good franchises and they literally do nothing with them.
Guys... I spent that much at a bowling alley with 2 other people; once, for 2 hours of bowling and a soda. I'm not saying that's a good thing. I'm saying that in terms of recreation, compared to anything else, it's still insane bang-buck. Let's also not forget video games are discretionary spending, meaning they could charge $400 and it would still not be any more immoral than an expensive handbag. It would just mean that I'm not buying it, just like how I don't buy expensive handbags.
Edit for reply: > In general, if you find yourself thinking a group of people are "just being dramatic" then you're probably missing context.
According to what law of reasoning is this true?
According to Occam's razor, the most likely explanation is simply dopamine addicts getting frustrated they'll be feeling even more guilty about their spending habits, as they continue spending regardless. Otherwise, an $80 game doesn't hurt any more than seeing a $1000 monitor stand.
Edit for reply 2: > Why edit rather than reply?
Because "posting too fast, please slow down, thanks" is a blunt and poorly thought through instrument.
I'm a gamer and I 100% agree with you.
The simple fact is, AAA game prices have been stuck at $60-70 for 30 years. Despite $60 in 1995 being worth ~$127 today, games are still $60. They haven't kept up with inflation. Games are relatively cheap while development costs for AAA are ridiculously high.
A typical SNES game had 10-30 people working on it and would have it done in 1.5-3 years. AAA games will have typically 1,000-3,000 and could take 3-7 years, so we're talking 100-200 times the development cost.
Now, compare the best-selling SNES games [0] to the overall best-selling games [1]. Modern AAA games barely reach 10x the unit sales as old SNES games.
Margins are thinning.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Super_Nin...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_gam...
In general, if you find yourself thinking a group of people are "just being dramatic" then you're probably missing context.
Hilton Hotels (2007) by Blackstone Group, Despite the 2008 crisis, refinanced and sold with a $14B profit
Safeway (1986) by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Restructured, sold underperforming stores, returned to profitability
HCA Healthcare (2006) by KKR & Bain Capital, Strong cash flow supported debt; remained stable and profitable
Dell Technologies (2013), Silver Lake Partners, Went private, streamlined operations, and rebounded strongly
RJR Nabisco (1989) by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts Iconic LBO; despite controversy, generated $53M profit
This give you some idea of the volume https://www.ropesgray.com/en/insights/alerts/2025/07/us-pe-m...
Twitter is yet an unfolding story but it seems to be working.
We don't have exact insights to X.com's books, but we have credible reports from the Financial Times that they produced over a billion dollars in ebitda in 2024. This is completely possible with a 50% revenue drop. They laid off 80% of the company, something like 6,000 people.
I’m not sure about profit, but I do know that Twitter made $1.4B in profit in 2019 according to their SEC filings.
Beautiful turnaround if those figures are reliable, but like Munger calls them, EBITDA tends to bullshit metrics derived by cobbling up bullshit to hide that a company is losing cash.
Just like Figma booking $700M in 2023 profits which was only possible because of the $1b Adobe breakup fee. Proceeded to lose $732m on $749m in revenues the very next year.
Keep in mind that a LBO is actually a good deal for the bank, because if the purchased company goes bankrupt, the bank can recoup their investment by liquidating the company.
However, that only works if there are assets to liquidate. This can include physical assets, valuable IPs, or favorable lease agreements. In other words, anything that someone else would want to purchase.
Twitter, being a website, doesn't have a whole lot of assets they could sell. Which meant that other collateral was required for Musk to secure financing.
The wiki article linked cites a lot of abuse, but all of it is nearly 2 decades old. My understanding was that it course corrected, and is one of the better gaming firms to work for ATM.
Maybe it's pay walled.
Do you have a source?
I'm sure the Saudi investors think this might be one way to get influence over the west, or maybe they just like playing FIFA, but I can see this buyout becoming a big stinking turd investment in the long run.
Cities: Skylines managed to fill that gap, but then C:S2 was an utter dud on release.
I think part of the problem is that we've reached a point where the players expect each individual citizen to be simulated, with the traffic to match, but doing that creates such a massive demand on CPU power that even a modern monster system will struggle once your city reaches the high 6-digit population. Simulating 100K vehicles in real time isn't easy. Even if you're not rendering them all because of draw distance limitations, you're still running path finding regularly if you want vehicles to be smart and try to bypass traffic jams, not to mention just trying to make them respond to traffic signals and not rear-end each other.
Step 2. Buy a company on credit.
Step 3. Stick company with the loan used to buy it.
Step 4. RIF, cut costs, reduce quality, break contracts, and discontinue goods and services.
Step 5. Sell everything of value.
Step 6. Send that company into bankruptcy.
Step 7. Rinse, lather, and repeat.
Customers feel like they are being treated like ATM machines, while the tens of billions of revenue are clearly not going into new, exciting creative endeavors. I suppose all of this makes sense when you consider that EA is a 45 year old company.
And more previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45400478
EA is already widely reviled for this stuff so it will be like getting blood from a stone
The Kingdom of Saud - It's in the game.
At what point does the narrative about their investments on the larger stage become less pejorative?
Another murder last month, this one they killed for the crimes of attending protests and funerals: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde23/0239/2025/en/
Two years ago they sentenced this man to death because he tweeted something they didn't like to less than ten followers: https://www.uscirf.gov/religious-prisoners-conscience/forb-v...
Ironic in the most morbid of ways.
Maybe the narrative changes when their approaches towards human rights does?
Remember when the current leader of Saudi Arabia lured a Washington Post journalist into a Saudi consulate, had him tortured to death, and cut into pieces to dispose of the evidence? What a bunch of merry pranksters. We really should lighten up.
Awful people run the world.
Clo$e. The narrative change$ whenever the $audi$ decide that they want it to. U$ually, thi$ involve$ $omething, but I can't figure quite what that "it" could be.
My man, they can kill you for drawing a stick figure.
Let that sink in.
SA is still a single-export economy, and those who are smart enough to get out of SA, do so. From personally having very close relationships with a few folks who worked on the NEOM project, the Saudi locals are not prepared to do any work at all, just spend money and export the work to consultants. It's about posturing, not rolling up their sleeves.
Before anyone thinks I'm Islamophobic, I equally detest and mock all religion.
I do find it funny that if there is an afterlife, Abraham is there, and absolutely befuddled as to why all of his disciples seem to hate each other and want to kill each other.
We all have skin in the game when there's an actor on the world stage that kills its critics buying up huge orgs in our society.
Citation very much needed. It's still a country where you can be executed for being gay, protestors against government projects get murdered in the streets, and anyone vaguely critical against the government (that includes being critical for things which have since been allowed, like women driving) being imprisoned for long periods of time. Oh, and did they not execute a dissident in a consulate? Did they not bait various government detractors living abroad to return to Saudi under threat of harm to their families?
It's still a reactionary theocracy. It has liberalised, socially, in the years since MBS has had de facto control, there is no denying that; but they're nowhere near "westernly".
> At what point does the narrative about their investments on the larger stage become less pejorative?
When their sportswashing and investmentwashing ends up entirely working. It will probably take years, Khashoggi's murder was still only 7 years ago. It will also depend a lot on how their World Cup works, a lot of the world will be watching that one closely and it will have big ramifications.
I think that's what they meant by "moved westernly".
Even for Britain, France, Germany, the countries with the biggest far right/reactionary political groups, where there are legitimate chances for them to end up in power, none of them are religious. Or even that socially reactionary for that matter.
But let's not ignore the danger from the Left. Sure, a transcendant, self-sacrificing God is out of the picture, but enthroned in his place is My Self-defined Sexual Identity, or depending on the variety, Those We Define to be Oppressed. In the new atheist Puritanism, dissent will get something worse than wearing a scarlet letter. The problem isn't theocracy, per se, its the fact that dissent is not tolerated, and the Left isn't any better here.