Microsoft to acquire Activision Blizzard

Well, 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.

I mean it was confirmed they had a native client at one point during testing, but decided to never actually release it.

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!

Well, 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.

This 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?

Well from a Linux gamer's perspective we have seen much worse acquisitions over the last years where MS was actually swallowing Linux 'friendly' companies.

One 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 Jan 2022 at 5:06 pm UTC

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.

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...

"$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:
!link

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.

One of these days Microsoft will acquire Microsoft and we'll all die from the resulting black hole.

!link

I see this as good news.
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

It's weird seeing so many think this is a good pattern and praising MS for being gamer friendly lately. Does no one else see these grabs as a great lock-in? Give it a little time, buy another beloved studio or three, then start the MS store exclusivity. With no other possibility from any of those shell publishers anymore, it will be a forced success - what Epic tried but with the capital to pull it off. And then, it could even be a simple swap to UWP and game over WINE/Proton.

One 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.

You mean their stock buybacks? yahoo finance link

As a person that only plays retro games and indie stuff on itch.io. Meh.

Don't forget Nintendo off that list

I recall there are a few constraints on acquiring a Japanese company. Am I wrong?

No idea, but it looks like everyone missed this point.

A lot can happen in 21 years though.

The only factor that I can think it could prevent this acquisition would be Tecent.

Depends on what kind of Money MS would throw at then, I think the right amount would make Tencent sell, isn't that their entire business with Epic, to draw up the worth of it to sell it all for a huge profit? Or do we see Tencent as a long time owner?


Last edited by F.Ultra on 18 Jan 2022 at 6:06 pm UTC

I don't appreciate the way Microsoft handles Minecraft accounts -- super annoying when you have multiple and they keep logging out; parental controls sound good but have to be disabled just to join your own LAN server -- and breaking Halo co-op when it used to work.

The other part is their sheer size. They own GitHub! LinkedIn! Many game studios and many other technologies.

I've really looked forward to AAA games for most of my gaming life, but I'm finally starting to shift like others here. Games I've spent a ton of time lately: Deep Rock Galactic, SnowRunner, Ready or Not. I have been sinking time into them and they are made by smaller companies.

Well, the good thing about it (if one tries to see a good thing) is that MS isn't Sony. MS tends to release not only on their XBox, but also on Windows. Which in turns means that we're likely still able to run the game in Proton. With Sony, their games tend to be PS exclusive until they are typically so old that when a Windows port arrives, they're considered retro-games.

Ok, and tbh, is anybody really going to miss what was one of the most toxic companies to work for in America?

Other than that, geesh, did REALLY nobody in charge ever read a Economics textbook to realize that market concentration is bad? Will this stop only when there is only MS and Sony and their two consoles left? Does nobody realize that for a free-market economy to work, it takes a think called competition. And does nobody realize that if companies can spend that kind of money to buy all their competitors, we're not taxing corporations nearly high enough?

Meh. I'm pretty sure Activision Blizzard never released anything on Linux, so this news makes no odds to me.

I haven't touched a blizzard game since the CEO's now-long-ago response to the petition to bring their games to Linux. Given how everything microsoft touches goes to sh*t, I'd say ...

Whatever.

Well... they can't make it any worse right?

Other than that, geesh, did REALLY nobody in charge ever read a Economics textbook to realize that market concentration is bad? Will this stop only when there is only MS and Sony and their two consoles left? Does nobody realize that for a free-market economy to work, it takes a think called competition. And does nobody realize that if companies can spend that kind of money to buy all their competitors, we're not taxing corporations nearly high enough?

Well, for a free market economy to avoid one particular dysfunction takes competition. And over the last few decades, masses of mergers and acquisitions, plus network effects in the new rising tech sectors, have led to more and more areas of business with very few firms controlling them, which in turn is leading, more lately, to monopoly pricing and other nasty stuff. So I wholeheartedly agree there. And I absolutely agree about the tax thing.
So yeah, this is just one more example of a general bad trend.

However, I would want to argue that, first, there is no such thing as a free market economy and there really can't be one. And, to the extent that free market economies are approached, they suck in various other ways even if there is robust competition. So it's not like just killing the oligopolies would magically make everything great. Necessary but not sufficient.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 18 Jan 2022 at 6:25 pm UTC

So no more native Linux games from Activision Blizzard.

Wait ...