October 25, 2026

Welcome to Letters from CAMP, a newsletter on anti-monopoly activity in Canada and abroad, brought to you by the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project. In this installment we have:

• Gamers pay the cost of consolidation as Electronic Arts shuts down Edmonton-based BioWare
• The Star shows Ontario’s gambling regulators tried to cover up rising problem gambling·
• FTC seeks to block private equity-owned PlayPower’s acquisition of playground rival Burke

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Now let’s dive in.

Game Over for Edmonton’s BioWare as Consolidation Bites

This week, video game maker Electronic Arts (EA) announced that it would be closing Edmonton-based BioWare, a video game studio behind several hugely popular video game franchises including Mass Effect, Baldur’s Gate, and Dragon Age. The closing of BioWare shows the consequences of consolidation and the increasing role of private equity in the videogames industry. BioWare was acquired by BioWare in 2007, one of nearly 50 acquisitions the company has made since 1987. The results of those acquisitions will not surprise you: half of those acquisitions have since been shuttered or folded into different portfolio companies.

This history is riddled with examples of how EA’s consolidation of smaller game studios stifled the passion and creative freedom of its employees and gradually led to the failure of those studios. Though BioWare had survived several waves of rationalization, that changed once EA itself was acquired and taken private in 2025. The gaming giant was purchased by a consortium that included the Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake private equity, and Affinity Partners, founded by Presidential son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Eventually, even a studio responsible for multiple successful franchises did not stand a chance against the private equity playbook.

Zooming out, it’s a difficult period for the games industry. Budgets for triple-A games have ballooned, but profits have failed to catch up. EA’s new owners have planned to divest from smaller titles to focus on major franchises like FIFA and Battlefield, and to cut costs by using more artificial intelligence in development. BioWare’s closure is a major loss for employees, the Edmonton economy, and gamers. Here’s hoping the studio’s talented employees find a place in Canada’s growing indie games industry, whose competitive significance will only grow as more of the market is populated by the final bosses of monopoly.

📰 CAMP in the News 📰

• ​Toronto’s mayoral race points to prediction market loopholes (BetaKit)

Ontario Gambling Regulator Tries to Cover Up Rising Harms

In 2022, just before Ontario changed gambling laws to allow for online casinos to enter the market, iGaming Ontario commissioned a study that would measure trends in problem gambling. The intent was to understand the effects that the news laws had on Ontarians, a reasonable course of action for a regulator interested in the welfare of Ontarians. Now, heavily redacted documents obtained by the Toronto Star show that the research showed a steep increase in problem gambling and that iGaming Ontario executives sought to suppress the release of the research.

Earlier this month, Rob Csernyik sat down with CAMP to talk about his new book, A Losing Hand, which maps out the growing harms of legalized gambling in Canada. A major issue Csernyik pointed to was the lack of available data and studies on the impact of gambling. To sum up, it’s much more difficult to problem if you don’t have a good sense of its scope and scale. What the Star has revealed is even worse: those tasked with protecting the interests of Ontarians when it comes to gambling are not flying blind, they’re covering their own eyes.

Just four years after liberalization, gambling is an emerging public health crisis in Ontario. The direct costs of loosened gambling laws – emergency room visits, crisis calls, bankruptcies, and gambling related suicides – are all rising alongside gambling revenue. That leaves out other indirect costs, like intimate partner and family violence, which are often associated with problem gambling. The Star’s reporting shows that the supposed economic and fiscal benefits of liberalized gambling have corrupted those tasked with regulating it. It’s time to put the genie back in the bottle.

📚 What We’re Reading 📚

• Panneton, Who Needs a TFSA when you have Rare Pokemon Cards? (Maclean’s)
• Eaton, Gibadullina, Goldstein and Laprise, The New Private Equity: Corporate Raider, Main Street Invader, Monopoly Builder, Shadow Owner, (Roosevelt Institute)
• Sofi, The American AI Exports Program Risks Stifling Smaller Competitors (Pro Market)

Paying the Price for Private Equity’s Playground Purchases

This week, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) stepped in to block a merger in the market for playground equipment, moving to stop PlayPower from buying Burke, one of its key competitors. Based on the FTC’s analysis, the American playground equipment will be a familiar sight to Letters readers: approximately 90% of the market is controlled by just five firms. PlayPower has been on a shopping spree, but to the FTC the purchase of Burke is a bridge too far. The result? More expensive and more boring playgrounds as the incentive to innovate falls and the price of their equipment rises.

PlayPower has been a vehicle for consolidation for two decades, buying Little Tikes in 2004 and Playworld in 2016. The possible source of this growth strategy will also be familiar to readers. In 2003, PlayPower itself, was purchased by private equity firm Investicorp, later being sold to private equity giant Apollo in 2011. Today, PlayPower is owned by yet another private equity firm, Platinum Equity, whose portfolio includes the Detroit Pistons and protective case maker Pelican. Platinum’s behaviour makes an odd pairing for the manufacturer of playgrounds, becoming the target of criticism in 2020 for its management of a prison telephone provider charging excessively high rates for prisoners to make calls.

Markets like can receive less scrutiny because they are considered less serious than those for staples goods and necessities. But kids, parents, and school administrators should be able to count on competition to protect their interest in the market for playgrounds as much as any other. This makes the move to block the merger by the FTC even more welcome. The market for fun is serious business. Without the vigilance of enforcers, it can be monopolized at our expense just like any other.

If you have any monopoly tips or stories you’d like to share, drop us a line at hello@antimonopoly.ca

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