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PayPalA 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.
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
slaapliedje Jan 18, 2022
Quoting: Liam DaweI mean it was confirmed they had a native client at one point during testing, but decided to never actually release it.Quoting: 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.
They are also one of those few that released an M1 native client for Macs like right away. Wonder under MS, how that'll continue.
On the flip side of this, I got an email today about Ultima Online: Forever having a new expansion!
Quoting: elmapulQuoting: 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...
I remember the rumor about Blizzard having a native Linux build of WoW that some of the developers used. The way I heard it at the time was that there was practically zero chance of it ever being released. The company didn't want to get involved with such a small market, and Linux users could always use Wine, which they tried to make sure would work, but without any official support. I don't know if it was true or not.
Quoting: PikoloThis is sad news. Not that Activision Blizzard is a good company or anything, but Microsoft is already way too large. I hope antimonopoly regulations prevent this from going through.
your propic is familiar where is this from?
Schattenspiegel Jan 18, 2022
Quoting: NanobangOne of these days Microsoft will acquire Microsoft and we'll all die from the resulting black hole.
lol
actually this day exists its called yesterday.
Last edited by elmapul on 18 January 2022 at 5:06 pm UTC
Quoting: fagnerlnI 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.
im worried about this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law
i may not care about actblizz games, but someone else do, and this person may care about the same games that i do, and if such person refuse to use linux on their steamdeck, because linux cant play actblizz games, then its one less person using steamOS on the deck, wich means one less reason for companies to care about it, if that include one company who make games that i care about, then their future relases might not work as well...
Quoting: MohandevirQuoting: 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.
microsoft main sources of revenue are:
office, azure and windows.
if steamOS can steal some marketshare from windows they will cut the good guys facade, if it cant, then microsoft wins anyway.
Quoting: NanobangOne of these days Microsoft will acquire Microsoft and we'll all die from the resulting black hole.
ActiBliz work culture is so disturbingly bad that I really cannot see how this is a bad thing, Microsoft being the owner now they would get in trouble for whatever Kotik (intentional) does, or at least I hope that would be the case.
This might also mean Blizzard games/future Blizzard games could go over Steam which is a dream-come-true for me.
Bobby should've been fired and jailed ASAP but this ain't a perfect world ig
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