The Sims Have a New Landlord

$55 billion. $20 billion of that in debt. The largest all-cash leveraged buyout in corporate history, bigger than the $45 billion TXU deal that held the record for almost two decades. That's what it took to take Electronic Arts private this week. GamingOnLinux's writeup is what showed up in my feed, and the comment section under it was already doing most of the work of figuring out what this actually means, which tells you something, because the press release itself reads like nothing happened here beyond three investment firms agreeing on a valuation. I want to walk through what actually happened, because "EA got bought" is doing a lot of work to hide a pretty ugly set of specifics: who's paying for it, who's now in the room, and who's going to be asked to make up the difference when the math doesn't work. The Deal, In Numbers EA's own investor relations release lays out the structure plainly, once you get past the "unlock new opportunities on a global stage" language. A consortium…