NASDAQ title Microsoft share in red: Microsoft successfully completes Activision Blizzard takeover

After a long tug of war with competition watchdogs, Microsoft has completed its purchase of industry giant Activision Blizzard. Games like “Call of Duty”, “Overwatch”, “World of Warcraft” and “Candy Crush” belong to the software group and provider of the Xbox platform. Microsoft is now starting to integrate games from Activision Blizzard into its subscription service Games Pass, as games boss Phil Spencer announced on Friday. But that will still take months.

The companies announced the completion of the takeover a few hours after the green light from the British competition watchdog. Their condition was that part of Activision Blizzard’s cloud gaming rights went to the gaming company Ubisoft instead of to Microsoft.

British antitrust watchdogs feared the purchase would restrict competition in cloud gaming and initially blocked the deal in April. Cloud games run on servers on the Internet and are only transmitted to users’ devices. Microsoft is already strong in the business and, among other things, offered as a concession to transfer cloud gaming rights to Ubisoft for 15 years. The British competition authority CMA was satisfied with this.

Microsoft and Activision Blizzard announced the deal, which was worth around $69 billion, at the beginning of 2022. An initial concern from competition watchdogs was that Microsoft would then only offer the games on its Xbox console and its own cloud service.

In the course of the investigations, the company promised to make the games available for ten years for other consoles such as Sony’s Playstation or Nintendo’s Switch as well as cloud platforms from other providers.

This wasn’t enough for the US competition regulator FTC and they tried to have the completion of the takeover stopped by means of an interim injunction. However, their arguments did not convince the court. The FTC may attempt to take action even after the takeover is complete

– but the first failure in court lowers your chances in the end

to achieve a reversal. Playstation provider Sony, Xbox’s biggest rival, was also unsuccessful in its months-long resistance to the merger.

Because of discussions with regulators, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard extended the deadline for completing the acquisition from July to October 18th. The gaming company would have been entitled to a billion-dollar payment if the deal had ultimately fallen through. Longtime Activision Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick will only stay on board until the end of the year, he announced in an email released by Microsoft.

Microsoft shares lost 1.04 percent to $327.73 in NASDAQ trading.

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