{"id":10601,"date":"2022-11-24T21:14:28","date_gmt":"2022-11-24T21:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/2022\/11\/24\/report-says-us-government-will-likely-challenge-microsoft-buying-activision-blizzard\/"},"modified":"2022-11-24T21:14:28","modified_gmt":"2022-11-24T21:14:28","slug":"report-says-us-government-will-likely-challenge-microsoft-buying-activision-blizzard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/2022\/11\/24\/report-says-us-government-will-likely-challenge-microsoft-buying-activision-blizzard\/","title":{"rendered":"Report says US government will ‘likely’ challenge Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new report by Politico<\/a> says that the United States’ Federal Trade Commission is “likely” to go to an antitrust lawsuit to prevent Microsoft from executing its takeover of Activision Blizzard<\/a>. This is according to sources with insider knowledge of the FTC’s operations, who say the FTC’s investigation staff is “skeptical” of the companies’ arguments.<\/p>\n

Likely does not mean guaranteed, however, and the FTC’s commissioners have neither met with lawyers for Microsoft and Activision nor voted on a formal complaint.\u00a0The FTC declined to comment on Politico’s report.<\/p>\n

The FTC, under current Chair Lina Khan, has vowed to be tougher on mergers and acquisitions by already-large tech corporations, which they proved by getting involved in Nvidia’s failed attempt to purchase ARM. The FTC started investigating the deal between Microsoft and Activision earlier this year<\/a> when it was announced.<\/p>\n

Microsoft’s potential acquisition of Activision has been perhaps the hottest topic in this year’s gaming news, and depending on who you listen to would be either a seismic shift in how videogames conduct business or a relatively minor change in power between the big-3 gaming console makers. An FTC lawsuit, however, would be huge, and keep the deal from finalizing for significantly longer\u2014or not at all\u2014while those arguments are tested.<\/p>\n

Microsoft’s lawyers have been broadly arguing that a single game series can’t make or break a gaming console, while Sony’s have recently stated to the UK’s competition authority that competing franchise Battlefield “cannot keep up”<\/a> with Activision’s Call of Duty.<\/p>\n

It also recently came out that Microsoft offered Sony a 10-year deal<\/a> guaranteeing Call of Duty would be on PlayStation consoles. That’d give Sony an, at worst, pretty long length of runway to develop a proper Call of Duty competitor itself\u2014but Sony hasn’t had much to say publicly about that.<\/p>\n

You can read the full report on the possibility of an FTC lawsuit on Politico.<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[#item_image]Report says US government will ‘likely’ challenge Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard<\/p>\n

A new report by Politico<\/a> says that the United States’ Federal Trade Commission is “likely” to go to an antitrust lawsuit to prevent Microsoft from executing its takeover of Activision Blizzard<\/a>. This is according to sources with insider knowledge of the FTC’s operations, who say the FTC’s investigation staff is “skeptical” of the companies’ arguments.<\/p>\n

Likely does not mean guaranteed, however, and the FTC’s commissioners have neither met with lawyers for Microsoft and Activision nor voted on a formal complaint.\u00a0The FTC declined to comment on Politico’s report.<\/p>\n

The FTC, under current Chair Lina Khan, has vowed to be tougher on mergers and acquisitions by already-large tech corporations, which they proved by getting involved in Nvidia’s failed attempt to purchase ARM. The FTC started investigating the deal between Microsoft and Activision earlier this year<\/a> when it was announced.<\/p>\n

Microsoft’s potential acquisition of Activision has been perhaps the hottest topic in this year’s gaming news, and depending on who you listen to would be either a seismic shift in how videogames conduct business or a relatively minor change in power between the big-3 gaming console makers. An FTC lawsuit, however, would be huge, and keep the deal from finalizing for significantly longer\u2014or not at all\u2014while those arguments are tested.<\/p>\n

Microsoft’s lawyers have been broadly arguing that a single game series can’t make or break a gaming console, while Sony’s have recently stated to the UK’s competition authority that competing franchise Battlefield “cannot keep up”<\/a> with Activision’s Call of Duty.<\/p>\n

It also recently came out that Microsoft offered Sony a 10-year deal<\/a> guaranteeing Call of Duty would be on PlayStation consoles. That’d give Sony an, at worst, pretty long length of runway to develop a proper Call of Duty competitor itself\u2014but Sony hasn’t had much to say publicly about that.<\/p>\n

You can read the full report on the possibility of an FTC lawsuit on Politico.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10602,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10601"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bwgamespot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}