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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 Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.