this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023

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FTC says it will appeal to block Microsoft-Activision deal (www.cnbc.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/technology

19 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Remember when the government gave a shit about busting monopolies? That'd be cool to see happen again.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

Good. A Microsoft victory here will severely damage prospects for other antitrust actions and have a chilling effect on government oversight of mergers, which is already pretty thin.

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

How many do you think are being paid?

[–] Vaggumon 5 points 1 year ago

good luck.

[+] redditcunts -20 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Fuck the FTC. I'm tired of this shit. Just let this shit be done so I can get wow included in gamepass. Christ this is the dumbest shit ever.

[–] cyberpunk007 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Monopolies are not good for the consumer

[+] redditcunts -9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Imagine thinking for even a second in one of the most competitive industries on the planet. That Microsoft is the monopoly threat 🤣.

[–] Fedizen 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah the company that saturated schools and hardware manufacturers with exclusivity deals for its OS and went to court over letting people use the web browser they wanted. Surely the company that's currently trying to spin up a new data harvesting program through its "AI powered assistant" is trustworthy.

Surely they would never again try to make a move to reduce consumer choice in the future with GamePass. I would bet you that the current WGA strike that's going on will be replicated in gaming in 10, 20 years if it goes through (and probably if it doesn't) and for the exact same reason netflix is currently stating they want to make their writers homeless: they don't want to pay them anything.

[–] redditcunts -2 points 1 year ago

It works be a bit more convincing is you didn't use a 30 year old issue in an unrelated field. Comparing 90s OS market to the gaming market might win most absurd comparison of the day.

[–] dan1101 0 points 1 year ago

After seeing how MS is handling Starfield I don't think they need to acquire more big studios. First they took away Playstation support, now they are taking a big payout from AMD to be the official GPU of Starfield, even though AMD has a ~15% market share: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

And will Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 be any different?

IMO MS has one guy Phil Spencer that talks a good game, but the actions of MS are usually way different.

[–] KuroJ -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree. This is going on way too long.

From what I understand of the merger it seems like it would benefit gamers as a whole. It seems initially the main reason to stop this was to block Microsoft from exclusive rights over Call of Duty, which doesn't seem what Microsoft is intending to do.

Microsoft has even agreed to bring call of duty to Sony's Playstation for 10 years, and also to bring call of duty to the Nintendo switch.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I really don't see how this would hurt the gaming market, which is what is being argued here.

[–] QHC 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Microsoft could be lying, or could change their mind in the future.

[–] KuroJ 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/12/microsoft-activision-blizzard-deal-ftc-regulators

According to this article, Microsoft has agreed to sign a legally binding agreement with the FTC.

"Microsoft has said the deal would benefit gamers and gaming companies alike, and offered to sign a legally binding consent decree with the FTC to provide Call of Duty games to rivals including Sony for a decade."

Now for the future, that I couldn't tell you what Microsoft would do, but I believe the Microsoft of today is all about bringing these types of services and games to all. I think if they were to end support and only keep call of duty exclusive to Xbox it would actually do more harm to them than good.

[–] QHC 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That is good news. Thanks for clarifying (and for deservedly shaming me for not reading the article, haha).

[–] KuroJ 1 points 1 year ago

Haha no worries! To be fair, my quote is from a different article.