this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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"In a ruling submitted today, Judge Corley said the following:

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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[–] Yoz@lemmy.world 30 points 2 years ago

Break Microsoft, Meta and Google. They will kill humanity

[–] lp0101@lemmy.world 28 points 2 years ago (11 children)

This is really a tough one. I hate consolidation, but I also really hate Bobby Kottick.

[–] Sturgist@lemmy.ca 25 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Well, you're really gonna hate the fat pay out he gets.

[–] AnonTwo@kbin.social 18 points 2 years ago (1 children)

He was always going to get it though

[–] Goronmon@kbin.social 7 points 2 years ago

Yeah, in no version of how this played out was he going to not receive hundreds of millions of dollars. That was never an option.

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[–] LetMeEatCake@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Kotick gets rewarded by the deal going through. Billions of dollars from the sale. Worst case for him after that is a few hundred million from a golden parachute if he's fired. We have no real reason to think he will (or won't, to be clear) be fired though, so there's a very real chance this is full reward for him: giant piles of money and continues to get to run Activision-Blizzard, just with Microsoft bosses above him.

The deal going through isn't something you want if you hate him.

[–] lp0101@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago

He was filthy rich anyway, a few hundred million more doesn't make any difference. If the deal gets him out, then that's still a small win, despite Microsoft owning even more developers

[–] Reamen@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

The only reason I'm for the merger is that I know how much Microsoft can affect a corporations executive structure. I would hope they are already planning to replace him already, but either way he won't last when he gets tossed into MS' culture.

At least, that is what I'm hopping.

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[–] icogniito@lemmy.zip 26 points 2 years ago

While I absolutely hate the fact that the gaming industry is being consolidated into a few massive corps, I am very excited for the entire Activision Blizzard umbrella to be under new leadership.

[–] QubaXR@lemmy.world 22 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Oh great, more consolidation and monopoly building.

[–] Grimr0c@lemmy.world 18 points 2 years ago (16 children)

'Tis the era of Indy Games, my friend. Abandon the Graphically amazing games that cannot be built upon passion due to have dev teams of 10,000 strong. Instead, embrace the smaller titles developed by less than 10 people whom cry with joy at the prospect of showering you with entertainment and art.

[–] PROblem@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago
  1. By Steam Deck
  2. Stop buying AAA games
  3. Subscribe to Humble Choice
  4. Enjoy gaming again
[–] Roggie@lemmynsfw.com 3 points 2 years ago

Facts, battlebit remastered is going to go down as one of the best releases of the year, and I think it was developed by just 3 people

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[–] giantofthenorth@lemmy.world 19 points 2 years ago (3 children)

What's the point of all these lawsuits over mergers when every single time there is clearly a monopolistic merger it just goes through anyways.

[–] Goronmon@kbin.social 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The issue in this instance is that's its hard to prove that a company not even close to leading to the market is going to somehow dominate that market through a single (albeit large) acquisition.

[–] donuts@kbin.social 17 points 2 years ago (2 children)

It's not a "single" acquisition though. Microsoft have been acquiring huge companies (Bethesda, for example), hit games (Minecraft), and key development parters from competition (remember Rare?) from the beginning of Xbox.

To think that they spent all of those billions of dollars to buy out everything but that they aren't going to use that to benefit their platforms, is just crazy to me.

Just like they said in one of their internal emails, they are in a unique position to spend their competition out of business, and the entire industry will be worse for it.

[–] Goronmon@kbin.social 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Microsoft have been acquiring huge companies (Bethesda, for example), hit games (Minecraft), and key development parters from competition (remember Rare?) from the beginning of Xbox.

And yet, they are still in third place in the gaming market behind Sony and Nintendo. If those acquisitions didn't turn Microsoft into a monopoly already, what will be significantly different if they acquire AVB?

[–] donuts@kbin.social 15 points 2 years ago (8 children)

They're 3rd place this generation mainly because they release one big exclusive per year, like Redfall, which turns out to be utter dogshit. It's not because they don't have an actual treasure trove of IP to draw from or a lack of development resources.

While Nintendo is putting out games like Tears of the Kingdom, Microsoft produces boring, samey, minorly iterative crap year after year. Halo and Gears went from being Xbox icons to unsurprising announcements at formulaic E3 press conferences, because Microsoft only seems to know how to beat dead horses.

Let me ask you this simple question: how have gamers or the industry benefited from Microsoft's past acquisitions?

I can't see any way that allowing Microsoft to own (and probably squander) an ever-growing library of IP is good for me or anyone outside of the company.

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[–] TheAndrewBrown@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

Theoretically, the way it works is each one of those sales should go through until you hit the one that would push them over the edge to monopoly. You don’t block a purchase because of purchases you expect them to make in the future (unless stuff has already been signed)

[–] Foggyfroggy@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

So that you think rich people have rules. Justice theater

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[–] oryx@lemmy.world 16 points 2 years ago (6 children)

I don't care about "monopolies" and "consolidation"

I just care about the possibility of Guitar Hero being revived god dammit

[–] woodenskewer@lemmy.world 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Clone hero is fun.

I gave up on guitar hero after they implemented the greedy "tokens" model on GH: Live. It was very lame. You had to play a radio station of sorts to get tokens. Tokens could be used to play a song of your choice. When you ran out you had to play the radio station or buy more with real money lol.

[–] VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Does Clone Hero have the character customization thing? It's totally pointless, but I enjoyed having my custom band on the stage.

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[–] Clbull@lemmy.world 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

As far as poison goes, I'd much rather pick Phil Spencer over Bobby Kotick.

[–] MeanEYE@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

My thinking exactly. Never though I'd see the day to be happy Microsoft is acquiring some company.

[–] donuts@kbin.social 9 points 2 years ago

As much as I hate Activision Blizzard as a publisher and Bobby Kotick as a person, I feel this level of corporate consolidation is a terrible thing for the games industry and gamers.

There is so much more to this than CoD being on Playstation or not...

[–] colonial@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

Fucking hell. We really need to shatter all these cancerous megacorps.

[–] GreenAlex@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

It's amazing to me how short-sighted this decision is. Yeah sure keep wide access to CoD for 10 years to get the FTC off their back and then watch all that fall away immediately after. For us this is potentially decent gains in the short term but certainly contributes to this industry turning to crap long term.

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[–] echoplex21@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago (3 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 10 points 2 years ago (7 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.

[–] Whirlybird@aussie.zone 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

they did I don’t know how much damage to Arkane with Redfall…

Microsoft aren't to blame for Redfall. Redfall started development in 2018 but Microsoft didn't buy them til 2021. Redfall sucks because Arkane Austin made a bad game without any input from MS.

Microsoft didn't close all their studios either. In fact they've barely closed any actual studios that have made xbox games. They closed ones that were bad though. Lionhead closed because Fable Legends was bad. I was in the beta, and it was not a good game. It would have absolutely flopped and killed the studio. They closed Ensemble almost 15 years ago. That's about it really.

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[–] echoplex21@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Hmm are they ? Yes 343 has been meh. But I’ve enjoyed the new Gears games, Forza hasn’t missed a step, Psychonauts may have been my GOTY, Ori has become one of my favorite series’s of all time, HiFi Rush was a surprise hit as well as Pentiment. Also the issue with Arkane was Bethesda mandating them to make it a GaaS before their acquisition with MS; other wise they were hands off (which they’ve done to a fault).

Meanwhile ATVI recently has been Sekiro and Diablo? I’m probably forgetting some games for sure. And let’s not forget all the SA that have run rampant at that company unfortunately :(

I think after recent developments and from how MS has been changing their tune, it feels they’ve learnt from their extreme hands off position. At least I hope so. Hopefully they get to that perfect middle ground that Sony has achieved

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[–] drewsipher@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago (9 children)

I hate this consolidation of the gaming market but Microsoft seems to not have sex pest as direct bosses so that’s a good thing… makes me feel less scummy if I buy d4

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