FTC Sues To Block Microsoft Activision Deal

The Pachter curse strikes again. Maybe Microsoft should sue him…

This won't mean a thing cause MS will counter sue saying, and proving, that the FTC has a bias against them, that allowing Activision/Blizzard to remain in its current state will be to the detriment of gaming and its staff, and will mean that Nintendo does not get CoD games. Nintendo will likely side with MS due to this, they also have the backing of Valve and Take-Two.

Best of luck to the FTC, but this being the capitalistic dystopia that is the US, I don't expect them to win.

It'll be like this really wonderful thing when we don't have to hear about this crap anymore.

@goldenelementxl: I guess the speculation was wrong, and chairperson number 3 just voted party line.

Honestly, if the deal falls through, Sony will (IMO) never get that CoD agreement again - lots of people at AB are going to lose a lot of money if the deal does not go through.

I have no doubt that MS will take over the marketing rights of COD after the next COD game is done (ending the Sony contract) and will negotiate to put it on Game Pass.

How many people from the FTC own Sony stock?

So... if the FTC wins, does that mean than MS can then sue Sony, the industry leader in HD gaming, for entering in contracts with 3rd partly developers/publishers to keep games off XBox?

That's their rationale, correct?

Wait, Xbox lied to the EAA?!?!

@goldenelementxl said:

Wait, Xbox lied to the EAA?!?!

Uh oh :/

@goldenelementxl said:

Wait, Xbox lied to the EAA?!?!

Nope.

@kvallyx: Microsoft told the EAA during the Bethesda acquisition that they weren’t going to withhold any games from rivals companies, and then proceeded to withhold games from rival companies… How is that not lying?

Its shit like this that made the FTC believe they have a solid case…

MS never once said that they wouldn't make any games exclusive to Xbox or that they wouldn't withhold games from rival companies to the EAA during the Bethesda acquisition. So yes, the FTC is 100% lying.

Let's see if the courts agree that blocking the deal will be better for consumers.

Might be interesting. Depending how it goes I can see deep changes coming to the industry regarding 3rd party exclusives.

https://www.shacknews.com/article/121533/microsoft-wont-make-bethesda-go-exclusive-but-it-wants-the-first-or-best-on-xbox

Nah they totally said it.

I'm enjoying all the panic.

That is the EAA /MS meeting notes?

It's going to be a long few months.

No, but they were saying this a lot publicly. I imagine they said the same in those meetings just like they're doing now with Activision.

Cows still in a panic as this thing closes.

This has been Xbox fan Twitter accounts for the past 6 months already… Folks like XCloudTimDog, who care barely form a sentence, and sounds like he’s snoring when he breathes, has been giving us legal opinions for months now

Fucking hilarious.

Almost as funny as how many here still don't understand what the FTC's issue with the merger is and why they are starting the process of blocking it with this complaint. **** some of you can't even realize that competition is good for the industry and the consumer so by harming the competition in a way that takes one of the few top publishers for multiple platforms off the market means consumers have less choices of where and how they play games.

Some of you got way too used to corporate yes-men chairing the FTC and rolling over on deals that shouldn't have gone through and it really shows.

Fucking fanboys think a government agency is just being spiteful and going through all this knowing full well it'll fail is the height of hilarity.

And when this deal fails those same fanboys will go back to recognizing Activision-Blizzard for the mid tier crap it has always been.

The FTC needs to sue? I thought they were a government committee and have the final say on these things.

Yes, finally! Didn't think they will do it but seems like the new chairwoman I have been hearing about is true to her word. Good job!

EDIT: Yes, I agree with ZeroTheHero here (I know I know). Why do they have to sue? Why can't they just block it? Sure MS will then take them to the court but that's how it's done in other jurisdictions.

Cows being given false hope after false hope,This just makes it sweeter when the deal goes through 🤣🤣

Thanks for your honesty.

https://ec.europa.eu/competition/mergers/cases1/202124/m10001_438_3.pdf

The Notifying Party explains that the profitability of a strategy to make ZeniMax games exclusive to the Xbox console would depend on a trade-off between: (i) the value of attracting new players to the Xbox ecosystem; and (ii) the lost income from the sale of ZeniMax games for rival consoles (through the related storefronts). In this regard, the Notifying Party forecasts that a significant share of ZeniMax games sales will occur on rival consoles over the life cycle of the newly released console generation. 106 Based on such a trade-off, the Notifying Party submits that a hypothetical console exclusivity strategy would be profitable only if it led to an increase in the number of Xbox users [forecast million] over the next five years, corresponding to an increase in Xbox shipments [forecast percentage] above the forecast level.

In the Notifying Party’s view, it is implausible that Microsoft would achieve such results. Firstly, the Notifying Party considers that such a strategy is likely to be successful if service differentiation is weak and the content at issue is extremely valuable. 108 However, rival consoles are significantly differentiated, and have accumulated brand loyalty.

As you can see, Ms' argument is that it wouldn't be profitable to make games exclusively because of how small their market share was. They said they needed the other platforms in order to continue making a profit so exclusivity shouldn't be a concern.

They need to go through the courts for these kinds of matters. You don't want the FTC to have that kind of power.

FTC cant do shat. Nintendo done signed a deal with Microsoft so their arguments are nothing. Theyre only sueing now cause now that Microsoft and Nintendo teamed up to slap Sony in the face, theirs nothing else they can do. Stopping Microsoft from buying will just help Sony spend money to keep games away from Nintendo. Well played Microsoft, well played.

And it goes as I stated, FTC is wrong. That confirms that the FTC is wrong. MS never stated that all games would be multiplatform (they would never say that, as it's their platform and nobody does infinite contracts). Not only that, but MS has continued to support Minecraft across multiple platforms as they stated they would do. MS also didn't pull any games that were in development under contract. They still support Elder Scrolls online with new content and DLC, as well as Fallout 76. They released Psychonauts 2 for PS as promised. And now they want to do an unprecedented contract with their COD IP for 10 years with Sony, Nintendo and Steam. They are also releasing new games for PS, including the upcoming Minecraft Legends.

actually, they prefaced that with:

"The Notifying Party submits that Microsoft has strong incentives to continue making ZeniMax games available for rival consoles (and their related storefronts)"

language like "incentives", "depend", "forecasts", "hypothetical", and "[im]plausible" are all legally vague.. they certainly implied that keeping games on rival consoles would be beneficial but that's a far cry from "Microsoft told the EAA during the Bethesda acquisition that they weren’t going to withhold any games from rivals companies"..

From what I am seeing, it's looking like this is a done deal and AB and MS will close out the deal. A win win for consumers.

Let's all see how far FTC can really go:

As sneaky as MS/Bethesda are with the messaging above, technically they are still in compliance of what they promised. They didn't explicitly said all games will be on rival platforms, they just said that significant portion of Zenimax games sales which I'm sure is still on PS because Deathloop and Ghost Wrire were both timed exclusive on PS and then all MS titles are on GP, so sales would probably will still be higher on PS.

They thought they were being smart but then it came and bit them back in the a$$ with AB deal.

They should have brought the case when Sony was closing on Bungie, so that could have been brought in and blocked as well. Better than nothing, though.

Going to die on this hill I guess. We'll have to get it in writing once it's rejected. Give us those Lem tears.

Wtf are you reading? Guess it has to be spelled out for you. It's not going through, what are you having a hard time comprehending?

@kvallyx: @Antwan3K: If that's how you guys see it. I'm just stating that they made the case that exclusivity wasn't part of their plan. They also went on to say the same in public during interviews. This is behavior of being vague and then switching it up after the deal is closed is what has the FTC and CMA spooked. And like @pc_rocks said, it's coming back to bite them.

@Sagemode87:

You keep telling yourself that, anything to ease the pain 🤣

@Zero_epyon: i specifically remember the big sit-down interview with Phil and Bethesda where he specifically said publicly:

..if you're an Xbox customer, the thing I want you to know is this is about delivering great exclusive games for you that ship on platforms where Game Pass exists, and that's our goal.. - link

that's pretty clear.. 🤷🏽‍♂️

please provide links to public interviews where he said the plan was to keep all Bethesda games on PlayStation..

So this is Xbox Twitter right about now...

As much I'm enjoying the panic from Xboxland, I don't think the FTC will be able to hold them off. Lina Khan said they're pretty much outgunned when it comes to these major tech giants, plus it's going to be hard to prove that buying publishers actually stops Sony from competing.

It would be different if MS bought, say, AMD or outlets that sold PS consoles and prevented them from being able to supply systems to customers. Then it would be more of a slam dunk. I'm against these major consolidations, but I'm not sure if there's a lot of ground to stand on. If that Bethesda thing is true, then, maybe.

In the meantime 🤣🤣🤣 at the people who surrounded their whole lives around this deal crying right now

lol sony 🤣, you are a chihuaha compared to MS the pitbull. Even if this deal by some miracle doesn't close, MS will come after your ass, and you will wish you stayed quiet 🤣🤣

MS always lie, scum company like EA. Win out against the EU, never happening. Glad the FTC have balls and not lets big corps do whatever the **** they like.

If this gets blocked, and at this point its even looking likely that it might because of the EU, then good luck to sony. So far, MS was playing with pee shooters, they're going to bring out the big guns, the bazookas and blast sonys ass away. Also no way in hell will activision make marketing deals with sony, Bobby Kotick is going to be pissed...$250 million pissed.

This was Phil after the deal closed. At this point, he made the plan clear. Bethesda games will be exclusive to the MS ecosystem.

This was Phile before the merger:

https://www.newsweek.com/xbox-bethesda-zenimax-deal-phil-spencer-exclusivity-elder-scrolls-6-playstation-1539897

I don't want to be flip about that. This deal was not done to take games away from another player base like that," Spencer said. "Nowhere in the documentation that we put together was: 'How do we keep other players from playing these games?' We want more people to be able to play games, not fewer people to be able to go play games. But I'll also say in the model—I'm just answering directly the question that you had—when I think about where people are going to be playing and the number of devices that we had, and we have xCloud and PC and Game Pass and our console base, I don't have to go ship those games on any other platform other than the platforms that we support in order to kind of make the deal work for us. Whatever that means.

And this was their CFO:

https://www.shacknews.com/article/121533/microsoft-wont-make-bethesda-go-exclusive-but-it-wants-the-first-or-best-on-xbox

What we want is we want that content, in the long run, to be either first or better or best or pick your differentiated experience, on our platforms. We will want Bethesda content to show up the best as—on our platforms. If you think about something like Game Pass, if it shows up best in Game Pass, that's what we want to see, and we want to drive our Game Pass subscriber base through that Bethesda pipeline.

They're doing the same thing, being purposefully vague when they know they're not putting any Bethesda games on other platforms.

Bobby Kotick is going to get kicked and Activision will continue to do deals that make them money. Also, what makes you think Activision won't hold a grudge against MS for failing to secure the deal? They must have known that others would object.

Phil has this weird thing about not looking like the bad guy even when his company buys two publishers in a row in an obviously aggressive move to shut down competition. I think this tiptoeish nature may be biting them in the ass right now. He should have been upfront. "Xbox is the new home for Starfield and Elder Scrolls", and that's that..

They got so shellshocked last gen when Xbox One was getting dunked on, now they want nothing but pats on the back for everything they do.