this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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In the latest unredacted document oopsie stemming from the US Federal Trade Commission's efforts to stop Microsoft acqu…

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[–] heliumlake 172 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Bring back anti-trust regulations. Microsoft has been trying to acquire anything they can get their hands on, and really should be dismantled on principle.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yes, indeed. This is so obvious and my frustration is immeasurable when hearing that people are too ignorant to understand why this is really bad.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No it's good! It'll give them twice the power to make games and it'll be better! They totally won't just sit there with their monopoly, monopolies are good! Plus we still have Sony. Wait they want to buy Sony too? Even better!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Yayay, all my games on Microsoft©️ GamePass™️, wait what do you mean they increased the prices? I’m sure one of the competitors…oh

[–] TheGrandNagus 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've been repeatedly downvoted on here and on Reddit for pointing out that Microsoft clearly just wants to capture the market and wield their disproportionate amount of power (their money, pretty much monopolistic OS position, ever-growing IP, and strength to push DirectX over other standards, etc) as a weapon.

People really love Microsoft and won't hear criticism of them.

People look at gamepass and think ooooh that's great, such a good price. I'm sure they won't ever jack up prices once they capture the market!

I'm sure it's fine that MS has sole control over the graphics API pretty much all games use!

It's fine that MS is spending dozens to hundreds of billions on buying publishers, because Sony bought one too (that's a 15th the size)! And it's fine that they're making that stuff exclusive to their platforms!

It's fine that Microsoft hurts open standards!

Etc.

I'm so damn tired of people carrying water for multi ~~billion~~ trillion dollar companies with immense history of anticompetitive and illegal behaviour.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I get your point. You‘re not the only one schooling peeps on this. It’s highly frustrating.

Make sure to not repeat yourself a lot but make a blog, youtube channel, etc. Make your statements, put sources together to make it easy and logical and then just link to it.

The big problem democracy has is efficiency. People who actually know stuff burn out because they don’t accept that they might be right but not efficient. Don’t be that guy.

I‘m currently trying to build stuff up with mastodon but it’s still a wip.

Good luck to you.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I was watching this video this morning, and he points out how these leaks show a pattern of Microsoft basically wanting to buy up all of gaming (I also liked how he called Microsoft’s whole way of think about buying Nintendo as a bit of American imperialism). Folks like their Game Pass and don’t like Nintendo not giving a damn about trends or multiplayer or whatever and just going along doing their own thing, and think it would be a great idea for Microsoft to own them, and…no. Just, no.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This was before ABK, in fact around Zenimax acquisition time. After the excruciating process of ABK's acquisition which also brought us highly costly leak, I think they won't dare to buy a big player for now and no regulator would let that happen given it would be a horizontal acquisition if I understand that correctly.

[–] echo64 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The recent actiblizz situation has shown that Microsoft can do whatever they want, and no regulator will stop them. No regulator currently has teeth or a want to stop any aspect of big business, especially not tech. Thinking a regulator will say no to anything at this point is wishful at beat.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean it's still stuck and CMA may still block it for all we know. Regulators definitely made them go through hoops for this one and it there's a next one it'll probably not go well after this.

[–] echo64 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So I would like to be on board with this. But if you look at every single regulator who even double taked, it was all about cloud. They don't care about consolidation of media and they have no intention of stopping it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I think they cared about it, saw the numbers, and realised the case can't be made because of the current way market is setup. CMA initially wasn't convinced but with correct calculations it got resolved. FTC actually didn't make a big point over cloud but that this could destroy PlayStation, which also wasn't justifiable with data. EU held similar opinions but felt it also is pro competitive given the number of IPs Sony holds.

But after ABK, I don't think that case can be made anymore. With ABK the number of IPs and content becomes more competitive with PS and Nintendo, and they all kept saying this is a vertical merger, Nintendo or Sony wouldn't, and thus wouldn't be allowed.