Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

The title is a little misleading. This ruling is only regarding the preliminary injunction. There is still an ongoing suit with the FTC and we will need to wait for that to be resolved. However, knowing how these things go, Microsoft will make a ton of promises about creating jobs, keeping their content available to everyone, and agreeing to play fair. They will get approval and immediately turn around and terminate a ton of jobs, start making things exclusive, and backtrack on their promises. Then…nothing will happen. There will be no repercussions. Rinse and repeat.
- Thank the GOP for basically ridding the US of antitrust law, which is now basically no longer a thing.
  
  contemporary democrats are not any better, they make hella frequent concessions to anti-competitive business practices under the guise of licensing or stimulus
  
  The guys who claim capitalism works because a free market will create better things through competition. Guess they weren't so much for the competition stuff and just became puppets for corporations. We also have it completely legal to openly bribe politicians which makes zero fucking sense, except we call it lobbying so it somehow becomes okay.
  
  I think they're still there, just haven't been trotted out in recent history. And mergers keep getting approved.
- It's my understanding that Microsoft can now close the deal and acquire ABK before the FTC trial would even take place (as soon as July 18th, though unlikely given the new UK CMA negotiations). What happens to the suit if the merger is already complete?
  
  Probably a fine that's simply justified as "operating costs". It's actually kinda bullshit, they shouldn't be allowed to buy up all the NA competition. Next is probably EA. Thankfully Sony saw this coming and started investing in new studios and IP.

Capital wins again. If only the FTC didn't sit on its ass for the last 40 years, maybe such market consolidation wouldn't be allowed and normalized.
Also shout-out to this comm. The Beehaw community seems delighted. You can sometimes really tell which instances skew toward leftists vs liberals
- The fact that it was challenged at all is a huge step in the right direction. Couple of years ago, the FTC wouldn’t even bat an eye with these mergers. The new chair, Lina Khan seems to be determined to reduce the power of monopolies.
  Which is a good thing, if this isn’t obvious.
  The problem lies with the complete out of touch judges now.
  
  Oh no, those judged seem touched. Maybe the need another sponsored yaht trip to clear their heads.
- If only the FTC didn't sit on its ass for the last 40 years
  That's more on the money than you think. Microsoft mostly won because the FTC didn't clamp down on Sony being anticompetitive which "forced" Microsoft to make these acquisitions. This situation is bad, but the alternative with Sony exclusivity deals all over the place was worse.
  
  No I think this is worse. It's not a deal. These are all first party studios now essentially, through nothing but the purchasing power of a trillion dollar company. They will and can be as locked as Microsoft prefers.
  There were 360 deals before PS4/PS5 deals. There were Xbox One deals even during Sony dominance, like Tomb Raider. Sony is just one player, but the others are not angels.
  Nothing here stops those deals from continuing.
  What has happened is that the second or third largest third party publisher's studios and "IP" now belong to a first party publisher.
  And I predict more acquisitions, and thus consolidation, will come from Sony.

- At the end of the day, acquisitions are always bad for customers
  
  This is one of the rare occasions where it’s a good thing. Activision has been a shit show for years. I have a lot more trust in Microsoft to run things.
- The enemy of my enemy is not my friend applies here I think. Kotick sucks and needs to be gone and I'm glad for that but I don't think this solution to that is much better long term for gamers and consumers.
- I personally just feel indifferent to the merger. Definitely won't say Microsoft has been the most guilty of game exclusivity, considering Sony have been pushing timed exclusivity on PlayStation. Nintendo doesn't have take that scrutiny only because their main catalouge are 1st party games.
  That said, it sucks that the only way to make someone as repulsively negligent to workers as Kotick depart is by letting him have a golden parachute to another company. Also, I just don't trust Microsoft to handle ABK that well. So far their strategy has been to just scoop up studios and expect them to make smash hits without really helping them innovate. It's that kind of attitude that left Rare a mere shadow of its former self.

I might be a little more upset if I could remember the last activision blizzard game I felt was worth playing.
- Overwatch 1 the first two years or so was pretty sick. Was definitely one of the most funs I've played. Now it's just skin shop with some maps to dress up in.
- You're not excited about Call Of Duty number 24?
- Horse armor angst be damned. Diablo 4 was decently fun. But the grind is slooooow.

You can "rah rah" about exclusivity all day long. What needs to be acknowledged is how huge this is in terms of developers under one company. As far as I can think of, there's never been anything like it. I don't think it's gonna be for the better, I mean this is the same company responsible for this
- GFWL was one of the worst attempts to compete with Steam I've ever seen, and also one of the worst software experiences I've ever had. I never got more than an hour into GTA4 because of it and how intolerant of bullshit software I am. Valve should have put their feet down back then and said "no secondary launcher dependencies".
  Game pass is OK in terms of value if you play lots of games, but the software it uses is not great, despite being leagues better than GFWL. Windows also sucks, but I'm stuck with it due to work :/

Seems like a foregone conclusion now that this will go through. Unless I’m mistaken, the only speed bump left is the UK CMA appeal in two weeks.
- The worst bit is, it seems like the CMA will negotiate with them. This might be well and truly over.
  
  I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t go through. I stand to benefit from the acquisition as a GP subscriber but I’m definitely worried about corporate consolidation. At least Bobby Kotick will go away
- The CMA appeal is covered in the article. Both parties have requested to delay the appeal so they can negotiate modifying the merger to address CMA concerns about cloud gaming. It's going through.
- That's depressing.

It went through because the judge thought that the only relevant thing was where CoD would be, and that 10yrs = forever. Neither is true though.

Well this is a good way to filter out how many Sony fanboys are here lol
- I mean fuck them both at this point. I'm tired of AAA shitty games, and platform lockins.

I'm all for this merger. Maybe Microsoft can use it as leverage against Sony to avoid needless exclusivity
- This is a bad take. Any and all large corporate mergers are bad.
  
  Microsoft gaming strategy does benefit gamers. Which counteracts the problem of losing a competitor.
  Microsoft doesnt care about profits on single products much compared to the grand strategy they follow. For example AoE4 and all the aoe franchise doesnt really give a lot of profit Microsoft would care about, yet they keep investing and updating it bc they like it and like the strategic benefit.
  Not caring as strictly about profit means you dont get as many greedy microtransactions and more balanced approaches. The game pass is also a really cheap deal if you play variety
  
  My other stance is that Activision is so shitty to its workers and customers, let's give someone else a try
- I expect this to make exclusivity even worse
  
  Why? Microsoft hasnt been pushing for it like Sony has. Sony has been crazy anti competitive.
- I would love to hear how this could possibly make exclusivity better. The only possible change is that all of the ABK library becomes Xbox/PC exclusive.
- If Microsoft could stop pushing for needless expense exclusivety you would have a stronger point. DX needs to die so gaming can move on, for example.