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EA adds unionisation and AI regulation to risk factors

EA adds unionisation and AI regulation to risk factors

US publishing giant Electronic Arts has said that unionised workers and regulation of artificial intelligence are a potential risk to its business.

As spotted by Axios, the company filed its 10-K annual report with the SEC in which it is compelled to share with shareholders the risk factors that could harm its business. In this latest filing, EA has added a section on the unionisation effort within the games industry to its section on 'Attracting, managing and retaining our talent is critical to our success'.

"Our global workforce is primarily non-unionised, but we have unions and works councils outside of the United States," EA wrote.

"In the US, there has been an increase in prominence in certain sectors of workers exercising their right to form or join a union. If significant employee populations were to unionise, we could experience operational changes that may materially impact our business."

Furthermore, EA has added a section on artificial intelligence into the section entitled 'Government regulations applicable to us may negatively impact our business'.

The company continued: "In our current phase of innovation, artificial intelligence capabilities are rapidly advancing, and it is possible that we could become subject to new regulations, or the interpretation of existing regulations, aimed at how we incorporate artificial intelligence into our games and development processes, that could negatively impact our operation and results."

It's worth noting that while there has been a wave of unionisation across the video games industry, particularly in the United States, there hasn't been an activity at Electronic Arts' stable of studios as of yet.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Forbes-Calvin is a freelance writer and photographer, mostly operating within the games industry. Over his career, he has written for the likes of MCV, Eurogamer, GamesIndustry.biz, The Observer, VGC and Esquire. That's on top of writing books for Dark Horse on RuneScape, Assassin's Creed, Dead Island 2 and more.