could have*

They didn't though. There's also no need to get into conspiracy theories and think everybody is going to start buying everybody else.

I think there was an article stadia wanted bethesda but Microsof saved them from failure stadia?

Bethesda are not helpless victims who can be purchased against their will, so no :) 

You can buy a company... or you can hire a bunch of developers to make games.

In either case, you will need to make back your costs by selling future games. So you need to track how much you spend very carefully. Many games companies basically only just about exist from pay check to pay check... a few just got lucky a couple of times and may (or may not) in future.

Even if EA could, they wouldn't be able to outbid MS. Amazon and Google would be the only ones, but since they lack successful gaming platforms, it would be one hell of a risk for them. MS already have the gaming infrastructures in place and brand power to make the purchase with very little risk.

Coca-Cola, Disney, Nestle or Tesla (and hundreds of other companies) also could have bought Bethesda/ZeniMax... but they didn't.

If ea bought them it would be a scummy company buying another scummy company

I’ll take MS ownership over EA or Amazon any day. EA has a bad habit of mismanaging and then closing studios they acquire, plus they were pretty strongly anti-singleplayer and pro games as a service for awhile (though they are starting to do better now). Amazon meanwhile probably would have made Bethesda games timed exclusive to their Luna streaming service, which would have really sucked.

Thank fuck EA didn't.. Don't need any more political pandering in my games tyvm.