FTC pulls emergency brake on Microsoft's marriage to Activision Blizzard Moving quickly to avoid what it worries could be a surprise merger finalization announcement, the US Federal Trade Commission has sought – and won* – a temporary restraining order to prevent Microsoft from completing its $69 billion acquisition of video game giant Activision Blizzard. In a filing [PDF] yesterday in the US …
I've never played anything released by Activision Blizzard, and I don't have any plans to do so in the future. But I still think this acquisition sounds bad for consumers and the industry. As the FTC points out, Microsoft has prior form in 1) engaging in anticompetitive behavior in this market, and 2) lying about it during the merger review process.
I have one name for you, REDFALL!
A complete botched, overhyped mess of a game that got absolutely slaughtered by everyone 'cos is was rushed out and who owns the studio? Yep, Microsoft!
Let's not forget that MS owns Betheda studios, the infamous "horse armour" where micro-transactions originated form. Why offer people expanded game DLCs when you can charge them all £5 for a piece of armour that everyone has so it's not even special. Activision and their infamous signature move of adding microtransations and lootboxes to everything they make. Diablo IV, where your enticed to pay £10 for a skin and which you can barely even see on screen. Let's not forget Diablo on mobile, ah yes the game where you need a PhD in economics to understand the game store mechanics and in game currencies!
What's up next? Ah yes, the much anticipated Starfield, another game that's got hype as high an elephant's eye. A game that expects you to play in a team on a spaceship and yet will not have any online co-op or multiplayer modes. FFS! It's been 4 years in the making and it's 2023, most people expect online co-op gaming to be the default mode with optional single player, yet here we have Bethesda ( owned by MS ) making a game that appears to have been designed in 1998. The tiny New Forest game studio who made No Man's Sky have a way better product than Bethesda will ever come up with.
You think things will improve if MS buy a $70bn gaming company? Takeovers almost always result in staff cut backs, quality reductions in the short term at least while the parent company decides how best to run their new aquisition to make sure it turns a profit. I know, punt out half baked, overhyped garbage games where the dev teams have been beaten into 90 hour working weeks by PR depts and the stuido's board just so they can meet the shareholder's expectations on divvies.
You're entitled to your opinion but having been a gamer for close on 40 years now, I'm afraid I've been burned more than a few times and now I keep my expectations in check and only spend my money on studios that deserve my money, which is more often than not indy studios who genuinely do care about making good quality games.
More like (as always) what the American master mandates, the British poodle wags its tail and does. Given the near word for word identical talking points from the CMA and FTC, it's pretty obvious who is leading who here and looks like the FTC are calling the shots here, particularly given the half assed conduct of the CMA in front of the tribunal
"If the FTC is successful in its emergency attempt to bar the move, its administrative case against the merger would be able to proceed as normal. Its next scheduled hearing is on August 2, weeks after the merger's July 18 deadline will have come and gone."
This seems to suggest that the FTC would not be able to proceed as normal. Does it mean that the FTC have to make a decision on the merger before the merger's deadline. But a restraining order would allow them to delay their decision until after July 18 thereby running the clock out on the merger.
That was answered in the article...
"Both a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction are necessary because Microsoft and Activision have represented that they may consummate the proposed acquisition at any time … without any further notice to the Commision,"
The restraining order is necessary to prevent the merger going ahead anyway. If the restraining order is granted, actual real C suite people could go to prison for breaking it, something you don't see every day... If...
It has been approved now, so this is not really an issue, but I can answer the questions on what would have happened.
If they didn't get the restraining order, then the companies would not be prevented from merging. The FTC has to block a merge before it becomes illegal, and they haven't completed doing so. They could try to change their schedule to have the next hearing earlier, but no guarantee they could organize it or that that will be the last one they need. They would still be able to raise objections after the merger completes, but then you have to somehow pull apart two companies that have already merged, which is a larger mess. Any problems caused during that mess would probably get the FTC sued by one or both of the companies involved. This only covers the United States. If the two companies merged, they would have some problems in the UK where they have already been refused permission. What they could or would do about that isn't something I know enough about to explain, but they probably have hundreds of lawyers who studied British corporate law looking at it.
By getting the order approved, the FTC has a lot of power to cause problems for the deal. This is partially because they can still argue for the deal to be refused, but also because they can delay action until existing agreements expire. I don't know what's in those agreements, so I don't know how difficult it would be to negotiate an extension, but it would create more problems for the two.
They could tbh and in reality the FTC are just stalling for time as they have to prove the merger isn't beneficial and apparently that's a very high bar to clear in the USA.
Microsoft for example could just not include Activision Blizzard titles in the UK market to comply with the CMA ruling and wait for the howls of protest to reach such a volume that politicians will have to "do something" either replace CMA head, make the CMA overridable by ministers or some other mcguffin
Well after the dropping of nearly finished PS versions, it is NOT in the gamers benefit.
And before people say things.
Most PS only studios were small ones nurtured by Sony,and their most recent acquitision in still multi platform.
Oh and MS, I still remember what you did to Netware!
The UK has said no, but has no actual powers at the moment to enforce that. It just doesn’t.
The FTC has said no, but again has no powers to enforce that, so instead is trying to get an injunction to stop BorkVision from ignoring them and merging anyway. If the merger goes ahead, then the FTC has an uphill battle to fight to force them to split, which could be dragged on by lawyers and appeals for decades. If it gets the injunction, then people can go to prison for ignoring it.
Pretty much confirmed what I thought : there is no legal possibility of preventing Big Money to merge. However, there is definitely the legal possibility of making a company split in two, if you're willing to go the distance, spend decades in legal wrangling and make hay for scores of lawyers.
In the meantime, apparently the only thing possible is basically banning the results of the merger in the countries that don't like it, which will do squat as far as consumer interest is concerned.
Yay capitalism.
Triple-A companies releasing products that have more bugs than a roach invested backstreet cafe! I don't buy triple-A games on day one and haven't for years biw as they're always complete cockups. I wait 12-18 months then pick them up 50% to 75% cheaper from Steam when the bugs are fixed and they throw in a DLC or two to sweeten the deal. Bought RDR2 for £20, bought Dying Light and all DLCs for £25, got FarCry5 with all DLCs for £25. Then you come to a game like Redfall, huge amount of hype, everyone went nuts and when it came out and MS expected us to pay £70 for what turned out to be a complete boring mess that everyone slaughtered in the reviews 'cos it was rushed to market by MS desperate to cash in.
I tend to poke about the indy companies, they may not be able to put out the best in terms of engines or graphics as they don't have the money, but my god they make up for it in stories and original ideas and they care about making solid games that are fun, work on day one and continue to be supported well for a few years after release.
Agreed, some of my favorite games are produced by independent studios. The last AAA game I bought was Forza Horizon 4 and it took ages to sort out that mess. Benchmarks ran just fine but benchmarks didn't show the horrendous input lag that made it unplayable or Microsoft's cavalier attitude in fixing it. Never again.
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