In the 10 years since the signing of the Paris Agreement, the backbone of international climate action, humanity has made impressive progress. Renewable energy is increasingly cheap and reliable, while electric vehicles are becoming better every year.

By virtually every key metric used to measure progress, though, we are still lagging behind where we would need to be to avert the worst effects of climate change, according to a report released Wednesday by a coalition of climate groups—and we’re running out of time to right the ship.

“All systems are flashing red,” Clea Shumer, a researcher at the World Resources Institute, one of the organizations involved in the report, said last week on a call with reporters. “There’s no doubt we are largely doing the right things—we are just not moving fast enough.”

The Paris Agreement aims to keep the world from warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by the end of this century. To measure progress toward this goal, the report looks at emissions from 45 different sectors of the global economy and environment, measuring everything from building electrification to use of coal in the power sector to global meat consumption.

Grimly, none of the indicators the report measures are where they need to be to keep the world on track to meet the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees. Six of the 45 indicators are “off track”—progress is being made, but not fast enough—while almost 30 are “well off track,” meaning progress is much too slow. Five, meanwhile, are headed in the “wrong direction,” meaning the situation is getting worse, not better, and needs an urgent U-turn. (There’s not enough data, the report says, to measure the remaining five indicators, which include peatland degradation and restoration, food waste, and the share of new buildings that are zero-carbon.)

One of the most consistently off-track markers, experts said, was the global effort to phase out coal, one of the largest contributors of greenhouse gas emissions. While coal’s share in global electricity generation did go down slightly in 2024, total coal use actually hit a record high last year thanks to growing electricity demand, especially from China and India. A dirty power grid, Shumer said, has “huge knock-on effects” for other progress indicators like decarbonizing buildings and transportation.

To get on track, the world needs to increase its pace of coal phaseout tenfold, Shumer said. That, she continued, would entail shutting down more than 360 medium-sized coal plants each year and canceling every coal-fired power plant currently in the global development pipeline.

“We simply will not limit warming to 1.5 degrees if coal use keeps breaking records,” Shumer said.’

It has been five years since Samsung and Google stopped supporting their respective mobile virtual reality headsets. For a second try, the companies have partnered up with a bolder vision in the mixed reality space, starting with the new Galaxy XR. Announced last year as Project Moohan, it’s the first headset powered by Android XR, a new platform for smart glasses and headsets built on Android and Google’s Gemini assistant from the ground up.

The Galaxy XR is available today in the US and South Korea for $1,800. (You can finance it for $149 per month for 12 months.) That’s a leap over standard VR headsets like the Meta Quest 3, but a significantly lower price than the $3,499 Vision Pro, which Apple is refreshing this week with the new M5 processor.

Galactic Vision

I was able to demo the headset again last week at a closed-doors media event in New York City held by Samsung, Google, and Qualcomm—the Galaxy XR is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chip—but not much was different from my original hands-on experience last year, which you can read more about here. The official name and price were the two big question marks, but that has now been addressed.

The Galaxy XR purports to do nearly everything that Apple’s device does. Pop the headset on and you’ll be able to see the room you’re in through the pancake lenses and layer virtual content over it, or whisk yourself off to another world. Your hands are the input (controllers are available as a separate purchase), and it uses eye tracking to see what you want to select. You can access all your favorite apps from the Google Play Store; XR apps will have a “Made for XR” label.

Samsung’s headset is more plasticky and doesn’t feel as premium as Apple’s Vision Pro—I noticed the tethered battery pack on a demo unit looked well-worn with fingerprint smudges on the coating. But this general construction makes it feel significantly lighter to wear. I wasn’t able to try it for a long period, but it felt comfortable, with the only issue being a sweaty brow after a 25-minute bout with it on. The headset was warm at the top, but the battery pack remained relatively cool. Speaking of, the battery lasts 2 hours or 2.5 hours if you’re purely watching video. That’s on par with the original Vision Pro, though the M5 version extends it to 2.5 with mixed use.

Electronic Arts (EA) is one of the world’s largest gaming companies. It has agreed to be acquired for US$55 billion in the second largest buyout in the industry’s history.

Under the terms, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund (a state-owned investment fund), along with private equity firms Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, will pay EA shareholders US$210 per share.

EA is known for making popular gaming titles such as Madden NFL, The Sims and Mass Effect. The deal, US$20 billion of which is debt-financed, will take the company private.

The acquisition reinforces consolidation trends across the creative sector, mirroring similar deals in music, film and television. Creative and cultural industries have a “tendency for bigness,” and this is certainly a big deal.

It marks a continuation of large game companies being consumed by even larger players, such as Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision/Blizzard in 2023.

Bad news for workers

There is growing consensus that this acquisition is likely to be bad news for game workers, who have already seen tens of thousands of layoffs in recent years.

This leveraged buyout will result in restructuring at EA-owned studios. It adds massive debt that will need servicing. That will likely mean canceled titles, closed studios and lost jobs.

In their book “Private Equity at Work: When Wall Street Manages Main Street,” researchers Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt point to the “moral hazard” created when equity partners saddle portfolio companies with debt but carry little direct financial risk themselves.

The Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) is looking to increase its holdings in lucrative sectors of the game industry as part of its diversification strategy. However, private equity firms subscribe to a “buy to sell” model, focusing on making significant returns in the short term.

Appelbaum notes that restructuring opportunities are more limited when larger, successful companies—like EA—are acquired. In such cases, she says, “financial engineering is more common,” often resulting in “layoffs or downsizing to increase cash flow and service debt.”

Financial engineering combines techniques from applied mathematics, computer science and economic theory to create new and complex financial tools. The failed risk management of these tools has been implicated in financial scandals and market crashes.

Financialization and the fissured workplace

The financialization of the game industry is a problem. Financialization refers to a set of changes in corporate ownership and governance—including the deregulation of financial markets—that have increased the influence of financial companies and investors.

It has produced economies where a considerable share of profits comes from financial transactions rather than the production and provision of goods and services.

It creates what American management professor David Weil calls a “fissured workplace” where ownership models are multi-layered and complex.

It gives financial players an influential seat at the corporate decision-making table and directs managerial attention toward investment returns while transferring the risks of failure to the portfolio company.

As a result, game titles, jobs and studios can be easily shed when financial companies restructure to increase dividends, leaving workers with little access to these financial players as accountable employers.

Chasing incentives and cutting costs

The Saudi PIF has stated a goal of creating 1.8 million “direct and indirect jobs” to stimulate the Saudi economy. But capital is mobile, and game companies will likely follow jurisdictions that have lower wages, fewer labor protections and significant tax incentives.

Some Canadian governments are working to keep studios and creative jobs closer to home. British Columbia recently increased its interactive media tax credit to 25%.

The move was welcomed by the chief operations officer of EA Vancouver, who said “B.C.”s continued commitment to the interactive digital media sector…through enhancements to the … tax credit … reflects the province’s recognition of the industry’s value and enables companies like ours to continue contributing to B.C.”s creative and innovative economy.”

This may buffer Vancouver’s flagship EA Sports studio, but those making less lucrative games or in regions without financial subsidies will be more at risk of closure, relocation or sale. Alberta-based Bioware—developer of games including Dragon Age and Mass Effect—could be at risk.

Other ways of aggressively cutting costs might come in the form of increased AI use. EA was called out in 2023 for saying AI regulation could negatively impact its business. Yet creative stagnation and cutting corners through AI will negatively impact the number of jobs, the quality of jobs and the quality of games. That could be a larger threat to EA’s business and reinforce a negative direction for the industry.

Game players have low tolerance for quality shifts and predatory monetization strategies. Research shows that gamers see acquisitions negatively: development takes longer, innovation is curtailed and creativity is stymied.

Consolidation among industry giants may cause players to lose faith in EA’s product—and games in general, given the many other entertainment options that are available.

Creative control and worker power at risk

Some have raised concerns that the acquisition could affect EA’s creative direction and editorial decisions, potentially leading to increased content restrictions.

While it’s still unclear how the deal will influence EA’s output, experiences in other industries might be a sign of things to come. For instance, comedians reportedly censored themselves to perform in Saudi Arabia.

The acquisition may also have a chilling effect on the workers’ unionization movement. Currently, no EA studios in Canada are unionized. Outsourced quality assurance workers at the EA-owned BioWare Studio in Edmonton successfully certified a union in 2022, but were subsequently laid off. Fears of outsourcing, layoffs and restructuring could discourage future organizing efforts.

On the other hand, the knowledge that large financial players are making massive profits could galvanize workers, especially considering that before the buyout, EA CEO Andrew Wilson was paid about 264 times the salary of the median EA employee.

The deal certainly does nothing to bring stability to an already volatile industry. Regardless of any cash injection, EA remains very exposed.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.