"In a ruling submitted today, Judge Corley said the following:
Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision has been described as the largest in tech history. It deserves scrutiny. That scrutiny has paid off: Microsoft has committed in writing, in public, and in court to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for 10 years on parity with Xbox. It made an agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Switch. And it entered several agreements to for the first time bring Activision’s content to several cloud gaming services. This Court’s responsibility in this case is narrow. It is to decide if, notwithstanding these current circumstances, the merger should be halted—perhaps even terminated—pending resolution of the FTC administrative action. For the reasons explained, the Court finds the FTC has not shown a likelihood it will prevail on its claim this particular vertical merger in this specific industry may substantially lessen competition. To the contrary, the record evidence points to more consumer access to Call of Duty and other Activision content. The motion for a preliminary injunction is therefore DENIED. "
While I absolutely hate the fact that the gaming industry is being consolidated into a few massive corps, I am very excited for the entire Activision Blizzard umbrella to be under new leadership.
I don’t care about “monopolies” and “consolidation”
I just care about the possibility of Guitar Hero being revived god dammit
As far as poison goes, I’d much rather pick Phil Spencer over Bobby Kotick.
Just a friendly reminder that the judge’s son works for Microsoft.
Irrelevant. The FTC knew and had no issues so why do you?
Read the linked article for some good potential reasons it’s an issue (e.g. Microsoft has been doing a lot of layoffs recently, why is her son still employed?)
But that was written before the ruling. Now that we have it, her ties to Microsoft offer at least one potential explanation to the nonsense of the decision (IMO, obviously).
For an excellent write up on what happened, check out Matt Stoler’s recent article.
Microsoft has been doing a lot of layoffs recently, why is her son still employed?
Last article I found said they laid off less than 1% of theor staff. It would be weird if he was layed off.
Lol so the only reason he wasn’t laid off is because of his mum? What are you basing that off?
I know reading is hard bro, but give it another go.
As soon as anyone even brings that up they’ve lost any argument or debate they are in.
They’ll go nuts on mobile gaming, I saw it on youtube
What’s the point of all these lawsuits over mergers when every single time there is clearly a monopolistic merger it just goes through anyways.
The issue in this instance is that’s its hard to prove that a company not even close to leading to the market is going to somehow dominate that market through a single (albeit large) acquisition.
It’s not a “single” acquisition though. Microsoft have been acquiring huge companies (Bethesda, for example), hit games (Minecraft), and key development parters from competition (remember Rare?) from the beginning of Xbox.
To think that they spent all of those billions of dollars to buy out everything but that they aren’t going to use that to benefit their platforms, is just crazy to me.
Just like they said in one of their internal emails, they are in a unique position to spend their competition out of business, and the entire industry will be worse for it.
Microsoft have been acquiring huge companies (Bethesda, for example), hit games (Minecraft), and key development parters from competition (remember Rare?) from the beginning of Xbox.
And yet, they are still in third place in the gaming market behind Sony and Nintendo. If those acquisitions didn’t turn Microsoft into a monopoly already, what will be significantly different if they acquire AVB?
Theoretically, the way it works is each one of those sales should go through until you hit the one that would push them over the edge to monopoly. You don’t block a purchase because of purchases you expect them to make in the future (unless stuff has already been signed)
RIP any new blizzard games in the UK
The CMA agreed to negotiate so I think it’s likely that a deal will be made soon. The UK doesn’t want to be left out
I know a lot of people (rightfully) are against it . But the way Activision/Blizzard has been run has been shambles and needs at least some kind of change. Plus the scrutiny has lead to several concessions by MS that will help curtail future antitrust issues for the most part.
They’re run more effectively than Microsoft has run their gaming division for the past ~15 years or so… Microsoft’s gaming leadership has seen one of the most valuable gaming IPs, Halo, flounder again and again and again. They closed all their game studios and spent a whole generation with minimal first party exclusives, they did I don’t know how much damage to Arkane with Redfall…
More generally, Microsoft’s approach to leading their game studios is to leave them to run the way the studio was ran pre-acquisition. Activision-Blizzard is not going to see major changes to the way they run if this deal does go through (pending CMA). Microsoft will Activision to be run the way it is now, and only intervene if profits dip too much (considering Halo, though, that might take quite the dip).
I don’t get the assumption that Activision is going to see some major cleanup from this. They won’t.
they did I don’t know how much damage to Arkane with Redfall…
Microsoft aren’t to blame for Redfall. Redfall started development in 2018 but Microsoft didn’t buy them til 2021. Redfall sucks because Arkane Austin made a bad game without any input from MS.
Microsoft didn’t close all their studios either. In fact they’ve barely closed any actual studios that have made xbox games. They closed ones that were bad though. Lionhead closed because Fable Legends was bad. I was in the beta, and it was not a good game. It would have absolutely flopped and killed the studio. They closed Ensemble almost 15 years ago. That’s about it really.
Devs can do no wrong, it’s always the publishers.
Well in that case it’s still not Microsoft, it’s Bethesda.
Oh great, more consolidation and monopoly building.
'Tis the era of Indy Games, my friend. Abandon the Graphically amazing games that cannot be built upon passion due to have dev teams of 10,000 strong. Instead, embrace the smaller titles developed by less than 10 people whom cry with joy at the prospect of showering you with entertainment and art.
This is really a tough one. I hate consolidation, but I also really hate Bobby Kottick.
Well, you’re really gonna hate the fat pay out he gets.
He was always going to get it though
If they start banning everything Activision makes from Steam, Gog, or other stores, then probably they’ll get a nice lawsuit. But tbh, if you don’t like Microsoft, then don’t buy Microsoft products and that will henceforth include Activision products.
Sure. But then Microsoft will buy Sega so you shouldn’t buy Sega products either. And then Microsoft will buy Capcom, so you can’t buy Capcom products either. So then Microsoft will buy SquareEnix so y-
Wait guys, I think corporate consolidation might be bad.
Companies should not be allowed to buy other companies
How come?
Because it leads to 6 companies making 95% of the food we eat
It’s amazing to me how short-sighted this decision is. Yeah sure keep wide access to CoD for 10 years to get the FTC off their back and then watch all that fall away immediately after. For us this is potentially decent gains in the short term but certainly contributes to this industry turning to crap long term.
