After British authorities rejected Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard in April, Microsoft can now look back on a success at EU level. You can find out what the approval of the deal means and what it now depends on here.
Activision Blizzard: That’s it
In early 2022, Microsoft made public plans to acquire Activision Blizzard for almost $70 billion. Activision Blizzard is one of the top-selling video game companies and publishes game series like Call of Duty and Diablobut also e-sports titles like Hearthstone and over watch. Immediately after the announcement, the first antitrust concerns were raised.
After all, Microsoft not only operates as a publisher of video games, but is also represented on the console market with the Xbox Series X. Sony fears that Microsoft could not make games available for the PlayStation 5, or only make them available incorrectly, in order to gain an unfair competitive advantage in the Xbox Series X vs. PlayStation 5 duel. Most recently, Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, publicly distanced himself from the plan to poach Sony users with exclusive titles. Perhaps he wanted to use it to calm these waves.
Subject to approval: These are the conditions
The authorities in various sales markets are currently examining the deal between Microsoft and Sony. Only recently, the British authority CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) blocked a deal on the grounds that Microsoft would thus hold a significant market share in the cloud gaming sector. The competition cannot keep up with this advantage.
This point of criticism is now addressed the European Commission in its justification but comes to a different conclusion. An agreement with Microsoft stipulates that the group may not make all titles that have been and will be published by Activision Blizzard available exclusively for Microsoft’s in-house cloud service xCloud. Instead, Microsoft must release the licenses for every available cloud service. For end users, that would mean playing Activision Blizzard games on any cloud-enabled device.
The deal is far from over
Although the European Commission agrees to this compromise, the Activision-Blizzard deal is still far from complete. Big markets like China, South Korea and even the US still have to approve the takeover. Until then, Activision Blizzard’s games will not be affected by the agreement between the European Commission and Microsoft. diablo 4the latest installment in the series, is coming June 6th across consoles.
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