A bit of wider industry news today. News which completely blows my mind - Microsoft are out to acquire Activision Blizzard. Pending all the regulatory approvals they need to go through which takes times and can be denied.
This continues the very worrying trend of these mega companies amassing huge resources. Microsoft now control a ridiculous amount of publisher and developer teams, easily helping towards more lock-in with Microsoft services and products. For Microsoft, it makes sense of course, since they can continue dumping titles into Game Pass and get more subscriptions for recurring revenue.
Activision Blizzard has been in a lot of hot water lately, which is probably a big understatement. Employees and investors have repeatedly called for the removal of the current CEO, Bobby Kotick. The press release is a bit vague on what will happen with Kotick, as it mentions Kotick "will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard" and then "Once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming". So it somewhat makes it sound like Kotick might only be there until the deal is fully done but it's pretty vague. Probably intentionally vague due to the ongoing issues. Update: Kotick will remain, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed via email. Update #2: They tried to clarify again later that they were speaking generally about the acquisition so it's anyone's guess what will happen with Kotick (IGN).
This will be an "all-cash transaction valued at $68.7 billion" which is so much money I can't even begin to imagine it.
Microsoft will then own the likes of Activision, Blizzard and King studios with Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, Call of Duty, Candy Crash and global eSports activities through Major League Gaming. The press release states this will make Microsoft "the world’s third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony".
Since Microsoft isn't quite the same as the Microsoft of old, we might end up seeing more Activision Blizzard games come to Steam and so making it even easier to run them on Linux through Steam Play Proton. Imagine having Diablo, Starcraft, Overwatch, various newer Call of Duty games and so on being a few clicks away on Steam + Linux.
What do you think to this news? The deal is expected to close in 2023.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Mohandevir Jan 18, 2022
Quoting: Liam DaweUpdate: Kotick will remain, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed via email.
6 Likes, Who?
wvstolzing Jan 18, 2022
I've heard that Kotick is slated to replace Satya Nadella. Could that be true?
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Arehandoro Jan 18, 2022
Quoting: Mohandevir“Evil is evil, lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I’m not a pious hermit. I haven't done only good in my life. But if I’m to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”
OK Geralt :P
5 Likes, Who?
Quoting: wvstolzingI've heard that Kotick is slated to replace Satya Nadella. Could that be true?Sounds like complete horseshit to me. Whoever said that has no idea what they're talking about.
4 Likes, Who?
Arehandoro Jan 18, 2022
Quoting: GuestQuoting: BielFPsMicrosoft to do list:Don't forget Nintendo off that list
[x] Bethesda
[x] Activision
[ ] Epic Games
If Nintendo wants to survive in this mega-corps acquisitions era, they should purchase SEGA, and Square-Enix, and maybe do an alliance with Valve to bring some of their titles to PC.
But another gaming crash is nigh. Who knows what will happen.
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Arehandoro Jan 18, 2022
These kind of news makes me very sad.
4 Likes, Who?
"Go home Liam, you're drunk."
I admit that's the first thing I could think when I read the title.
Ok... that's heavy. I need some time to digest it.
Personally I don't care for Activision. But Blizzard is associated with a lot of my young age good memories. Ofc that Blizzard is gone, destroyed forever by Bobby long time ago. M$ won't ressurrect it.
But who knows. Microsoft is indeed changing its company culture in the better. Slowly. But surely. Maybe in the long run, once Bobby is removed for good (ofc he will stay for the time being), under Microsoft they will again produce good games made by gamers for gamers (possibly without abuses this time
). Or maybe not. For sure, the way things are right now, there is nothing to lose. Starcraft is the only thing I care right now and it's already in mantenance mode. So I'm fine I guess.
I admit that's the first thing I could think when I read the title.
Ok... that's heavy. I need some time to digest it.
Personally I don't care for Activision. But Blizzard is associated with a lot of my young age good memories. Ofc that Blizzard is gone, destroyed forever by Bobby long time ago. M$ won't ressurrect it.
But who knows. Microsoft is indeed changing its company culture in the better. Slowly. But surely. Maybe in the long run, once Bobby is removed for good (ofc he will stay for the time being), under Microsoft they will again produce good games made by gamers for gamers (possibly without abuses this time
). Or maybe not. For sure, the way things are right now, there is nothing to lose. Starcraft is the only thing I care right now and it's already in mantenance mode. So I'm fine I guess.
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One of these days Microsoft will acquire Microsoft and we'll all die from the resulting black hole.
25 Likes, Who?
I don't think this will make much difference at all, really.
1 Likes, Who?
"$68.7 billion"
xbox division dont have this kinda money AFAIK, so i guess the main microsoft company is involved, i doubt its to compete against sony and nintendo, this probably is their answer to valve.
"which is so much money I can't even begin to imagine it."
mandatory meme:
Last edited by elmapul on 18 January 2022 at 5:00 pm UTC
xbox division dont have this kinda money AFAIK, so i guess the main microsoft company is involved, i doubt its to compete against sony and nintendo, this probably is their answer to valve.
"which is so much money I can't even begin to imagine it."
mandatory meme:
Last edited by elmapul on 18 January 2022 at 5:00 pm UTC
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ElamanOpiskelija Jan 18, 2022
It is big news, yes, but it's hard to foresee a positive impact.
I would rather have game makers get more independence, creatively speaking. That went already downhill during the Activision merge, so this is looking less promising.
Pretty likely, that they got them on the cheap: no presence in the games awards this year, no blizzcon this year. It is a very good move by Microsoft. Reminds me of Nokia...
I would rather have game makers get more independence, creatively speaking. That went already downhill during the Activision merge, so this is looking less promising.
Pretty likely, that they got them on the cheap: no presence in the games awards this year, no blizzcon this year. It is a very good move by Microsoft. Reminds me of Nokia...
3 Likes, Who?
Mohandevir Jan 18, 2022
Quoting: elmapul"$68.7 billion"
xbox division dont have this kinda money AFAIK, so i guess the main microsoft company is involved, i doubt its to compete against sony and nintendo, this probably is their answer to valve.
which is so much money I can't even begin to imagine it.
mandatory meme:
My guess is that it's an answer to Tencent acquisitions more than an answer to Valve. The US government as become pretty chilly, across the board, with China acquiring US interests, lately. Microsoft seems pretty fine with Valve and the Steam Deck.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 18 January 2022 at 3:51 pm UTC
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Quoting: rustybroomhandleQuoting: Liam DaweQuoting: syylkWell, most Blizzard products were known to run well under WINE since dirt was invented - to the point of speculating if somebody internally was smoothing them at the edges on purpose to keep some sort of unsupported-but-working compatibility...Wasn't speculation. In the past the WoW team did implement things here and there to smoothen running it in Wine. I don't have a source to hand but it was in public postings from their team on their official forum.
Possibly goes back to when Sam Lantinga worked there.
i remember reading somewhere that blizard had an internal build of warcraft running on linux, people especulated that they plan to relase it soon, years have passed and nothing happened, i always assumed that the linux comunity miss interpret the news, an headless server without any graphical pipeline to draw stuff on screen became "it has an native linux port, blizzard might relase it at any moment" only false hopes to convince people to not giveup on linux...
but now, reading this, i think their build was true, it just wasnt native...
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I don't know why you guys are worried, Activision/Blizzard is a cancer, a lot of bad practices. (I read that Diablo 2 ressurected has some "check in DRM" which you need to login every 30 days to keep playing)
And the first party games usually works on proton.
I mean, the war is against Sony, which to be honest, even with that huge amount of studios, PlayStation is still more interesting than XBox.
And the first party games usually works on proton.
I mean, the war is against Sony, which to be honest, even with that huge amount of studios, PlayStation is still more interesting than XBox.
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QuoteSince Microsoft isn't quite the same as the Microsoft of old, we might end up seeing more Activision Blizzard games come to Steam and so making it even easier to run them on Linux through Steam Play Proton. Imagine having Diablo, Starcraft, Overwatch, various newer Call of Duty games and so on being a few clicks away on Steam + Linux.
I'm thinking this is more of them building a moat around Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass.
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Hmm, I'm pretty shocked. This is not the acquisition I was hoping for. I was hoping and thought this would be EA since EA Play is also part of Xbox GamePass. EA would make such a perfect fit for the Xbox GamePass portfolio. The ABK acquisition is just so meh on the surface.
Microsoft has been very hands off with its larger acquisitions in the last year or so. The new production titles do work with GamePass and have an Xbox focus, but they also tend to let the companies run themselves and aren't "fixing" many of the ills fans hope for. A lot of the games are added to GamePass as part of the subscription, but their individual subscriptions are not (e.g.: Elder Scrolls Online). Zenimax Media and its former subsidiaries (Bethesda, Zenimax Online, Arkane, iD, and some others) are still essentially the same from the player's perspective. They haven't fixed Fallout 76 management. The Sony PS timed exclusives still launched on the PlayStation, and then later to Xbox GamePass. Elder Scrolls performance and network issues are still a hot mess especially in Cyrodiil.
I don't see much changing except their titles being rolled into Xbox and probably GamePass. My one hope out of this is that they'll ditch their awful Blizzard Launcher and separate 2FA system.
Microsoft has been very hands off with its larger acquisitions in the last year or so. The new production titles do work with GamePass and have an Xbox focus, but they also tend to let the companies run themselves and aren't "fixing" many of the ills fans hope for. A lot of the games are added to GamePass as part of the subscription, but their individual subscriptions are not (e.g.: Elder Scrolls Online). Zenimax Media and its former subsidiaries (Bethesda, Zenimax Online, Arkane, iD, and some others) are still essentially the same from the player's perspective. They haven't fixed Fallout 76 management. The Sony PS timed exclusives still launched on the PlayStation, and then later to Xbox GamePass. Elder Scrolls performance and network issues are still a hot mess especially in Cyrodiil.
I don't see much changing except their titles being rolled into Xbox and probably GamePass. My one hope out of this is that they'll ditch their awful Blizzard Launcher and separate 2FA system.
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Quoting: LordDaveTheKindQuoting: GuestDon't forget Nintendo off that listI recall there are a few constraints on acquiring a Japanese company. Am I wrong?
yeah, there are laws against being acquired by international companies, that is, if you are big enough.
and even if they tried, nintendo laughed at then once, they wont be trying again any time soon i guess.
1 Likes, Who?
This is a first in Microsoft history:
- Usually, they buy a successful studio at its highest, then they mess it all with their poor management until the creative leadership of the company resigns. Examples: Lionhead, Rare, Bungie...
- Now, they prefer to buy companies after they've already lost all their creativity. Can't be that much worse if it's already terrible, right?
Microsoft, thank you so much for being yourself. If one ever tried to parody you, they wouldn't even be able to pull it in such a blatantly clichéd manner (they would lack the money anyway...)
Now XBox players will get to see Doom 6 and Diablo 4 released with even worse technical problems than their predecessors!
Last edited by omer666 on 18 January 2022 at 4:31 pm UTC
- Usually, they buy a successful studio at its highest, then they mess it all with their poor management until the creative leadership of the company resigns. Examples: Lionhead, Rare, Bungie...
- Now, they prefer to buy companies after they've already lost all their creativity. Can't be that much worse if it's already terrible, right?
Microsoft, thank you so much for being yourself. If one ever tried to parody you, they wouldn't even be able to pull it in such a blatantly clichéd manner (they would lack the money anyway...)
Now XBox players will get to see Doom 6 and Diablo 4 released with even worse technical problems than their predecessors!
Last edited by omer666 on 18 January 2022 at 4:31 pm UTC
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so...
microsoft may not be able to convince many thirdy parties to adopt the latest directX standards, wich means, wine may be closer to perfection each year...
but they can acquire a lot of companies and then control they to force then adopt something that will make our lifes easier, if not impossible do develop something like wine.
(it take some time for wine to catch up with the latest apis or dx stuff, and if by that time they migrate the code to something new, then by the time something start working it break again, that is pretty much the reason why anti cheat is almost impossible to dodge)
if microsoft do it with enough critical franchises, we can kiss goodbye to any chances of improving linux share.
microsoft may not be able to convince many thirdy parties to adopt the latest directX standards, wich means, wine may be closer to perfection each year...
but they can acquire a lot of companies and then control they to force then adopt something that will make our lifes easier, if not impossible do develop something like wine.
(it take some time for wine to catch up with the latest apis or dx stuff, and if by that time they migrate the code to something new, then by the time something start working it break again, that is pretty much the reason why anti cheat is almost impossible to dodge)
if microsoft do it with enough critical franchises, we can kiss goodbye to any chances of improving linux share.
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Quoting: GuestDon't forget Nintendo off that list
Quoting: mrdeathjrbetter thisI don't think so
[ ] EA or this [ ] Capcom
EA has Battlefield ip and a lot of sports games like FIFA to keep then alive for a long time, same with Nintendo and their big three (Mario, Zelda and Pokemon)
Capcom I think would more likely to be acquired by another asian company like Bandai, Konami or Square Enix.
But Epic was everything to be acquired by Microsoft in my opinion:
-Epic games it's a platform 100% dependent on Windows
-It's only held by one in house ip (Fortnite), because giving free games doesn't help in the long term, if players don't also buy games from their store
-Would be interesting to Microsoft to integrate Epic Store users to their store, like they usually does to other software, at the same time they "remove" a potentially competitor
The only factor that I can think it could prevent this acquisition would be Tencent.
But since this seems unlikely to some then remember: If it happens, you heard first from me
Last edited by BielFPs on 19 January 2022 at 3:02 am UTC
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