Even though the deal is done, the FTC has appealed the decision for Call Of Duty maker Activision Blizzard to become part of Microsoft.
Ever since Microsoft started making moves to acquire Activision Blizzard for a whopping $69 billion (£57 billion), the US Federal Trade Commission has tried to stop it, claiming Microsoft would control too much of the cloud gaming industry.
The FTC had the UK’s Competition And Markets Authority (CMA) on their side, who blocked the deal, but after Microsoft loosened some of its grip on the cloud gaming industry in the UK, by outsourcing to Ubisoft, the CMA changed its mind.
As of October 13, the Activision Blizzard deal seemed to have gone through, making it the biggest acquisition in games (and Microsoft’s) history, but the FTC still wants to stop it, somehow.
The FTC appealed a previous US court ruling that let the deal go ahead, in an attempt to overturn the approval for Microsoft to acquire the Call Of Duty maker.
The judge of the ruling was wrong, according to the FTC, who argued that the court held the FTC to too high a standard when making its case against the acquisition, and that they only had to show that Microsoft could withhold Activision games from rival platforms, according to Reuters.
The FTC pointed out that that that’s something Microsoft has done in the past, and referred to the fact that not a single Bethesda game, including Starfield, has been multiformat since Microsoft bought the company.
Although exclusivity is standard for first party games, from all console manufacturers, Starfield and others were originally intended to be released on PlayStation 5 as well, with the previous court case revealing that Spencer decided to make all Bethesda games exclusives back in 2021.
His evasiveness over the issue may have given the FTC a chance if they’d perused it more at the time, but there seems little chance they can change anything now and will just end up being rebuked for wasting tax payer’s money.
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