FTC Review of Microsoft's Acquisition of Activision Blizzard to Focus on Consumer Data and Labor Market - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 06 April 2022 / 2,510 Views
Microsoft in January of this year announced it is acquiring Activision Blizzard in a deal worth $68.7 billion. This is the biggest acquisition in gaming history by a large amount.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has stepped in to investigate Microsoft's Activision Blizzard deal. The FTC will determine if the acquisition means unfair competition or not. This is according a person who wished to remain anonymous who is speaking to the organization.
A new report from The Information and transcribed by Seeking Alpha says FTC chair Lina Khan "will examine the deal with an eye to the combined companies' access to consumer data, the game developer labor market and the deal's impact on those workers who have accused Activision of discrimination and a hostile workplace." The FTC will also look into the "potential impact on a competitive metaverse."
The investigation is still in early states and the deal isn't expected to close anytime soon.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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If anyone wants much better games from Activision Blizzard than the mediocre games were getting now from them, then we should be begging this deal goes through. MS have proven that they will give their developers far more time and support than what those Dev's have gotten before.
Anyone against this deal isn't serious about wanting as many good games as possible.
PS My above claim is only in the short and mid term. Can never say what will happen in the long term future. These platform holders always abuse their power when in the lead.
Activision Blizzard aren't making bad games, OW, Diablo 3 and BO3 were some of my most played games last gen because they were great games (still are) but that doesn't mean they don't have questionable business practices which are likely to stay. I hope MS sorts the the internal issues out but I think many people expect MS to come in and magically sort the games out when I really don't think they bought them to just ditch one of their biggest revenue streams (microtransactions)
CoD, OW or whatever aren't going to suddenly not have them. MS isn't exactly against that stuff either looking at some of their titles so expect that side of things to not go anywhere at all. If it means the companies themselves are sorted out, working conditions are improved, less rather questionable articles like "Activision letting 800 people go" a month before April then giving bonuses to higher up employees and shareholders then great but I wouldn't expect the games to change all that much... because honestly, they aren't bad.
It should be noteworthy to anyone that has been following this that the FTC does not appear at all worried or interested in the competitive balance of the video game industry proper or the console market in particular.
Yeah, I noticed that as well.
I could pretty easily argue that Microsoft could buy up Sony and Nintendo and they still wouldn't be approaching a monopoly in video games.
completely agree!
Essay Pro