Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/11/23779039/microsoft-activision-blizzard-ftc-trial-win

From the article, quoting Judge Corley:

… 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.

#gaming @gaming

  • comicallycluttered@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Ten years, if they stick by the claim they made under oath about CoD. Other games? Don’t know. But not every ActBlizz game as long as CoD is still around. Theoretically, they could throw CoD under a new banner and spin it off into “not-ActivisionBlizzard”, but I don’t know what their plans are.

    To be honest, while Activision’s recent games tend to get equal treatment on PC and console (I believe; I may be wrong), Blizzard is another story entirely. And Activision-developed games right now amount to CoD, Crash, and Tony Hawk.

    Blizzard’s in a different situation. Games like WoW aren’t and likely won’t ever be on consoles (unless this deal gets it on Xbox somehow). Warcraft and StarCraft are pretty much PC-only with a couple of console ports early on. Hearthstone is PC and mobile. (Note: I’m counting Mac as PC purely out of convenience and I don’t really care that Apple doesn’t like the label.)

    Overwatch is on consoles, but it has other issues. In my experience, it’s always felt like more dev attention is paid to the PC version, but I can’t really state that as fact. I don’t know if Diablo favors PC over consoles either when it comes to development focus. From what I understand, IV is working equally fine across systems, but I don’t play it or pay attention to it much.

    King is just mobile, so I doubt there’ll be any change there. To be honest, Microsoft’s continual insistence on gaining a presence on mobile makes me think King may be more valuable to them in some respect compared to the other two.

    • hybrid havoc@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I’m pretty convinced that King is a huge part of this for them. People are so focused on the console side of things because of console war nonsense.

      • Whirlybird@aussie.zone
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        1 year ago

        Even when Microsoft specifically said as much people chose to ignore it.

        Microsoft want to build a mobile game ecosystem. King gets them a huge start to that plan.