Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision has been described as the largest in tech history. It deserves scrutiny. That scrutiny has paid off: Microsoft has committed in writing, in public, and in court to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for 10 years on parity with Xbox. It made an agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Switch. And it entered several agreements to for the first time bring Activision’s content to several cloud gaming services. This Court’s responsibility in this case is narrow. It is to decide if, notwithstanding these current circumstances, the merger should be halted—perhaps even terminated—pending resolution of the FTC administrative action. For the reasons explained, the Court finds the FTC has not shown a likelihood it will prevail on its claim this particular vertical merger in this specific industry may substantially lessen competition. To the contrary, the record evidence points to more consumer access to Call of Duty and other Activision content. The motion for a preliminary injunction is therefore DENIED. "

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[–] echoplex21@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago (13 children)

I know a lot of people (rightfully) are against it . But the way Activision/Blizzard has been run has been shambles and needs at least some kind of change. Plus the scrutiny has lead to several concessions by MS that will help curtail future antitrust issues for the most part.

[–] LetMeEatCake@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (9 children)

They're run more effectively than Microsoft has run their gaming division for the past ~15 years or so... Microsoft's gaming leadership has seen one of the most valuable gaming IPs, Halo, flounder again and again and again. They closed all their game studios and spent a whole generation with minimal first party exclusives, they did I don't know how much damage to Arkane with Redfall...

More generally, Microsoft's approach to leading their game studios is to leave them to run the way the studio was ran pre-acquisition. Activision-Blizzard is not going to see major changes to the way they run if this deal does go through (pending CMA). Microsoft will Activision to be run the way it is now, and only intervene if profits dip too much (considering Halo, though, that might take quite the dip).

I don't get the assumption that Activision is going to see some major cleanup from this. They won't.

[–] UberFox@feddit.nl 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well at least it's gonna clean up the really horrible practices at Activision Blizzard with all the SA allegations. MS is infinitely better for the workers than ABK.

[–] LetMeEatCake@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That only happens if Microsoft cleans house, which hasn't been their MO yet. It could happen. It's just not certain to happen. There's no real reason to predict it will or will not happen in either direction.

[–] echoplex21@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You’re right , MS has been very hands off with their studios since Bungie (they may have overcorrected a little too much). But I think there’s been dialogue of this changing especially after the Redfall dev cycle (very surprised Bethesda forced Arkane into such a departure from their regular MO). This will be very necessary especially with ABK.

[–] LetMeEatCake@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I haven't seen anything from Microsoft to indicate this. What did you see from them that makes you think that?

[–] echoplex21@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

The biggest sign was the upheaval of 343 leadership recently. Finally being rid of Bonnie Ross will do wonders for the team hopefully. I believe I’ve seen Matt Booty ( what a name) mention how they’ve given more power to the team who came in and fixed MCC. Plus they’ve recently mentioned how other dev studios might also get involved with the franchise.

found it

Plus they’ve recently changed the team responsible for Perfect Dark as well. Hopefully it’s a sign of things to come (who would have thought people would be WANTING them to become more hands on).

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