Here's some industry news for you: the UK's Competition and Markets Authority has announced today they've blocked Microsoft's takeover of Activision.
Interestingly, the main concern of the UK CMA here seems to be around Cloud Gaming specifically. As they said in their statement "Microsoft has a strong position in cloud gaming services and the evidence available to the CMA showed that Microsoft would find it commercially beneficial to make Activision’s games exclusive to its own cloud gaming service." and that "The deal would reinforce Microsoft’s advantage in the market by giving it control over important gaming content such as Call of Duty, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft. The evidence available to the CMA indicates that, absent the merger, Activision would start providing games via cloud platforms in the foreseeable future.".
Quite a big blow to the $68.7 billion deal!
We saw Microsoft attempt to get around these concerns, with various Cloud Gaming deals being announced over the last year but it seems that just hasn't been enough. An interesting part of the CMA announcement was on a proposal submitted by Microsoft, to address some of their concerns, this proposal was to set out "requirements governing what games must be offered by Microsoft to what platforms and on what conditions over a ten-year period" but one of the shortcomings noted was "It was not sufficiently open to providers who might wish to offer versions of games on PC operating systems other than Windows.". Nice to see.
The UK certainly isn't the only country to be concerned by the power this deal would hand to Microsoft with the US FTC also trying to block it and according to Reuters earlier this year there were no substantive settlement talks on it. So now with the UK blocking it, that will likely boost the FTC's argument to block it too. On top of that, there's also the EU regulators decision coming up next month.
Microsoft, naturally, will be attempting to appeal the decision.
What are your thoughts?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: damarrinThis not about Activision or ‘fixing’ it. This is about Microsoft not accumulating any more power in the gaming space. They own the PC OS everyone uses to game, they have a console, they have a shitton of studios.Don't forget GamePass, a very effective tool to bind users.
Sony is not a monopoly in any market, MS is and that’s why they’re scrutinised and treated differently.
ssj17vegeta Apr 27, 2023
But come on... How few company takeovers have been actually good for customers ? It's not even a topic about Microsoft, Sony or any other game corporation. It's about the ever-increasing amount of small and innovative game studios bought and buried by big corpos. Hell, Blizz being bought by Activision turned this company into a living hell for people working in it in the first place. Being bought again won't solve anything.
Bullfrog, Obsidian, Blizzard, Westwood, Bitmap Brothers, Psygnosis, Bioware... how many more studios does it take to make people realize ANY takeover is bad : the bigger the company, the more corporate bureaucrats obsessed with short-term profits have power over creative minds. Why do you guys think DLCs, microtransactions and all this toxic stuff is so common nowadays ? It's the result of decades of big corpos buying small studios.
Last edited by ssj17vegeta on 27 April 2023 at 1:08 pm UTC
Not to mention the vendor lock-in problem that will rear its ugly head again as soon as there's a business case to do so.
Quoting: constQuoting: damarrinThis not about Activision or ‘fixing’ it. This is about Microsoft not accumulating any more power in the gaming space. They own the PC OS everyone uses to game, they have a console, they have a shitton of studios.Don't forget GamePass, a very effective tool to bind users.
Sony is not a monopoly in any market, MS is and that’s why they’re scrutinised and treated differently.
Well, yes, though I expect it to get much less attractive once MS regains its market share.
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