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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[–] giantofthenorth 87 points 1 year ago (18 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.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (14 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.

[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 year ago (13 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.

[–] TheAndrewBrown 15 points 1 year 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)

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