New Delhi, Aug. 5 -- REDWOOD CITY, California - Electronic Arts officially ceased to be a publicly traded company Monday, completing a $55 billion transfer of ownership to a consortium led by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund. It is the largest all-cash leveraged buyout in history, and the clearest signal yet that the Gulf kingdom is building a global entertainment empire on a foundation that has nothing to do with oil.

The deal, announced last September and approved by shareholders in December, closed August 4 after regulators in the United States and Europe cleared all outstanding hurdles. EA's common stock was delisted from the Nasdaq, ending more than three decades on public markets. For the hundreds of millions of people who play...