Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard King for $69 Billion on 2023-10-13

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Official CMA accept the deal only if COD is not part of it
 
chris1515 said:
Official CMA accept the deal only if COD is not part of it
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You mean Provisional Findings. This is not the Final Findings.

However, in most cases the final findings are very close to the provisional findings.
 
Scenario (a) (iii) is nearly just as bad as (b) since the only thing Microsoft gets in the end are the employees of Activision Blizzard of which they clearly aren't interested and only it's tangible assets too so that means they don't even have the means to continue producing existing Activision Blizzard IPs ...

With (a) (ii), the only access to popular IPs would be the ones from Blizzard such as Warcraft, Overwatch, and Diablo so Microsoft may as well drop the acquisition ...

Option (a) (i) might be decent if they can find a big enough party (Tencent ?) willing to help pay for a chunk of the $70B or they renegotiate with Activision Blizzard ...

All of these cases were better than the raw 10 year deal that Microsoft would've given to Sony which only applied to COD ...
 
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Dr. Nick said:
A follow-up to what I said earlier, even if the CMA blocks this deal,...
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How does/can the CMA block the deal? I don't understand the legal practicalities of this. Let's say I want to buy a packet of Cheesy Quavers (who doesn't?). The Snack Regulator decides I can't and outlaws it. I walk into a shop to buy a packet anyway. At this point the police can block me, or, after I've made the purchase, issue a fine. If I refuse the fine, they can send the Police in to arrest me. Ultimately they can force me to comply through threat of sanctions. Or if not me, the vendors, threatening to imprison anyone who would dare sell me a packet of Quavers.

In the case of MS, what can the UK government do? Short of banning MS operating in the UK, I can't see them bringing sanctions powerful enough to affect MS, and they can't ban MS as too mucy is dependent on MS's continued operations. I mean, they can stiff MS with a honking great find, but if MS says, "no, we're not paying," then what? They don't have control of the governing body of ownership to prevent the sale going through and MS legally acquiring AB, so what exactly can they do to 'block' the deal?
 
Lurkmass said:
Scenario (a) (iii) is nearly just as bad as (b) since the only thing Microsoft gets in the end are the employees of Activision Blizzard of which they clearly aren't interested and only it's tangible assets too so that means they don't even have the means to continue producing existing Activision Blizzard IPs ...

With (a) (ii), the only access to popular IPs would be the ones from Blizzard such as Warcraft, Overwatch, and Diablo so Microsoft may as well drop the acquisition ...

Option (a) (i) might be decent if they can find a big enough party (Tencent ?) willing to help pay for a chunk of the $70B or they renegotiate with Activision Blizzard ...

All of these cases were better than the raw 10 year deal that Microsoft would've given to Sony which only applied to COD ...
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Almost all studios work on COD so option a is as bad as option b i agree.
 
BRiT said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1623311241702699010
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For 10 years like before maybe if they offer forever maybe CMA will accept it.

"We are committed to offering effective and easily enforceable solutions that address the CMA's concerns."

"Our commitment to grant long term 100% equal access to  Call of Duty to Sony, Nintendo, Steam and others preserves the deal’s benefits to gamers and developers and increases competition in the market."

"When we say equal, we mean equal. 10 years of parity. On content. On pricing. On features. On quality. On playability."
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Shifty Geezer said:
How does/can the CMA block the deal? I don't understand the legal practicalities of this. Let's say I want to buy a packet of Cheesy Quavers (who doesn't?). The Snack Regulator decides I can't and outlaws it. I walk into a shop to buy a packet anyway. At this point the police can block me, or, after I've made the purchase, issue a fine. If I refuse the fine, they can send the Police in to arrest me. Ultimately they can force me to comply through threat of sanctions. Or if not me, the vendors, threatening to imprison anyone who would dare sell me a packet of Quavers.

In the case of MS, what can the UK government do? Short of banning MS operating in the UK, I can't see them bringing sanctions powerful enough to affect MS, and they can't ban MS as too mucy is dependent on MS's continued operations. I mean, they can stiff MS with a honking great find, but if MS says, "no, we're not paying," then what? They don't have control of the governing body of ownership to prevent the sale going through and MS legally acquiring AB, so what exactly can they do to 'block' the deal?
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Everything I have watched and read says that if the CMA prohibits the move, it is dead, and the only thing that can be done to get around it is for Microsoft and ABK to pull all aspects of their business out of the UK. Since that is highly unlikely, the deal would be dead. Unlike the FTC and the EU, there are no courts that are going to force the CMA to allow the deal through. Even if the court finds something wrong with the findings, the CMA will be given a chance to correct it, and the deal will still not be able to go through.
Though with these latest findings, Microsoft might be able to find a way for this deal to go through, it seems like it will be tough.
 
If I was MS I would just abandon the deal and then use that 68B to buy up as many studios and developers that don't trigger any of this. I am talking about bungie sized and smaller. While doing so make as many deals for exclusives as possible. I think it be a better use of their time and money. It seems all these regulators are gunning to kill the deal based on some pretty faulty logic.

I'd also use the CMA blocking of the purchase as a reason to reduce head count in the UK.

or I guess you have activsion do the bad guy roll and just announce studio closures in the UK and move development to other countries
 
eastmen said:
If I was MS I would just abandon the deal and then use that 68B to buy up as many studios and developers that don't trigger any of this. I am talking about bungie sized and smaller. While doing so make as many deals for exclusives as possible. I think it be a better use of their time and money. It seems all these regulators are gunning to kill the deal based on some pretty faulty logic.

I'd also use the CMA blocking of the purchase as a reason to reduce head count in the UK.

or I guess you have activsion do the bad guy roll and just announce studio closures in the UK and move development to other countries
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yeah i wonder how they evaluate that, that this make more financial sense to them? For that much money i think you can get multiple studios of different sizes wich will be able to push equal or greater amount of content than whole ABK.
 
eastmen said:
I'd also use the CMA blocking of the purchase as a reason to reduce head count in the UK.

or I guess you have activsion do the bad guy roll and just announce studio closures in the UK and move development to other countries
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I'm not sure that is legal. If it is, that threat should have been hanging over this deal from the beginning. I don't think Microsoft would cede any territory over this deal. It would be nice to tell the CMA to shove it, but staying in the UK for all other aspects of the business is way more important.

The findings suck, but they are not the worst-case scenario, so there is still time to negotiate and, more importantly, educate regulators to get this deal through. The good thing for Microsoft is that this whole deal is still revolving around COD. They aren't complaining at all about all of the other IPs ABK has at their disposal. I still see a path forward.
 
www.reuters.com

Activision aims to help UK regulator 'better understand our industry'

"Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard said on Wednesday it hoped it could help Britain's competition regulator better understand the gaming industry after it said the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft could harm gamers.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
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Activision aims to help UK regulator 'better understand our industry'

"Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard said on Wednesday it hoped it could help Britain's competition regulator better understand the gaming industry after it said the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft could harm gamers.

"These are provisional findings, which means the CMA sets forth its concerns in writing, and both parties have a chance to respond," a spokesperson said.

"We hope between now and April we will be able to help the CMA better understand our industry to ensure they can achieve their stated mandate to promote an environment where people can be confident they are getting great choices and fair deals, where competitive, fair-dealing business can innovate and thrive, and where the whole UK economy can grow productively and sustainably."
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I think its important to remember that A/B wants this deal to go through , they are the ones who went out looking to get bought.

mr magoo said:
yeah i wonder how they evaluate that, that this make more financial sense to them? For that much money i think you can get multiple studios of different sizes wich will be able to push equal or greater amount of content than whole ABK.
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I think MS wanted the ip , teams and mobile side of A/B. It was an already made package that checked a bunch of their boxes. Good revenue in COD / wow , big mobile games , bunch of dev teams making moderate to high value games.

Ms can go out and buy other smaller companies but again its not ready made and it will take time to integrate a bunch of smaller companies
 
Dr. Nick said:
I'm not sure that is legal. If it is, that threat should have been hanging over this deal from the beginning. I don't think Microsoft would cede any territory over this deal. It would be nice to tell the CMA to shove it, but staying in the UK for all other aspects of the business is way more important.

The findings suck, but they are not the worst-case scenario, so there is still time to negotiate and, more importantly, educate regulators to get this deal through.
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What wouldn't be legal ? MS just laid off 10k people across the globe. They can simply lay off more. the A/B contract has payments if things don't get done at certain times. So Ms can just point to the loss there as the reason they will cut jobs. it's also not ceding territory over the deal. its just reducing head count. They could also point to hiring up to absorb AB and if the deal is dead they don't need the head count to account for that then. So why keep them employed?

Reading their findings it seems they want MS to sell off COD , sell off Activision as a whole , blizzard as a whole or both activision and blizzard as a whole . It doesn't factor in those 10 year contracts apparently but they do speak of it a little and it seems like that wouldn't be enough in their eyes.

At some point as you remove the building blocks of AB the deal wont be worth it to MS.
 
eastmen said:
If I was MS I would just abandon the deal and then use that 68B to buy up as many studios and developers that don't trigger any of this. I am talking about bungie sized and smaller. While doing so make as many deals for exclusives as possible. I think it be a better use of their time and money. It seems all these regulators are gunning to kill the deal based on some pretty faulty logic.
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Even buying up Bungie triggered a review from the FTC so any acquisition would have to be significantly smaller in scope than that. Other smaller publishers could virtually be off limits too ...
eastmen said:
I'd also use the CMA blocking of the purchase as a reason to reduce head count in the UK.

or I guess you have activsion do the bad guy roll and just announce studio closures in the UK and move development to other countries
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That would be a really petty move from either party. Just because the UK doesn't agree with the deal doesn't mean that they have to resort to escalatory or retaliatory tactics as a counter measure. A move like that could be potentially harmful to US-UK political/economic relations in spite of the fact that they both share more in common such as being western anglophone-centric democracies and agree to a rules based liberal international order ...

You think Activision or Microsoft stiffing America's closest ally is somehow the right move because they didn't get what they wanted ?
 
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