2y ago

Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

www.theverge.com

Microsoft can now go ahead and close its giant deal.

55 comments

This is a loss for consumers. Massive consolidation, lack of competition. Get ready for them to pull games from PlayStation as soon as they are contractually allowed to. Get ready for everything to be on Game Pass and possibly not on Steam. Worst case: they disable purchasing some games on Game Pass so you always need a subscription.
- They (both Microsoft and ActiBlizz) pulled games from Steam before, and they're both back on Steam well ahead of this deal. I don't see why that would change.
  We've now seen through court documents and transcripts what many of us suspected in that many of these games and studios that Microsoft purchased for exclusivity were Sony targets for exclusivity as well, so if we had to pick one, the company trailing in the market sounds like the better one to get them as exclusives.
  I can only see this as better for competition than Sony running away with the high-end console market, because then there's realistically only one console to buy.
  All that said about the above, fuck exclusivity in general.
  
  I see a lot of people using argument #2 and it's really short-sighted to treat acquisition the same as exclusivity deals. However much I don't like either, acquisitions are clearly worse. If you had to pick one, why would you wouldn't just leave it as case-by-case exclusivity deals?
  Say, SquareEnix and Atlus are fully capable of releasing games for other consoles even with all the exclusives they release for Playstation. And nothing stopped Microsoft from waving a wad of cash their way to change their minds.
  There is absolutely no way such a large acquisition will be better for competition. The publishers become unable to make their own platform decisions, no matter what benefits there are. You are losing sight of the market as a whole and the independence of studios by focusing exclusively on who gets the #1 console crown.
  
  so if we had to pick one,
  Did we, though? Or maybe FTC could prevent further consolidation that will eventually result (and is already) in anticompetitive practices?
  I can only see this as better for competition than Sony running away with the high-end console market, because then there's realistically only one console to buy.
  So now your choices will be: 1) pick the console that has more of your favorite games, or 2) now you have to buy BOTH consoles.
  Fucking brilliant.
  
  They (both Microsoft and ActiBlizz) pulled games from Steam before, and they're both back on Steam well ahead of this deal. I don't see why that would change.
  There's a lot of tangible reasons for Microsoft to pull the plug on Steam game sales.
  They want to focus Microsoft products as "Cloud-First" wherever possible, and selling copies on Steam hurts this initiative.
  They would probably prefer to not give Valve 30% revenue on every game sold for IPs that they own and have their own means of distribution (and even more now that they own Battle.Net) For all businesses, this is simply a case of maximizing profits.
  They aren't happy that Valve are essentially letting people run native windows applications on non-windows platforms.
  They view the Steam Deck as a potential competitor to the Xbox or other mobile game initiatives they might have.
  They would still love it if we all used Windows Store for downloads wherever possible, which is why they have lately been streamlining the process of getting products on that storefront.
  Those are reasons. I don't know if they would actually follow through and there are reasons for them to not do it, but every decision is a case of weighing the negatives and the positives. It really depends on if Microsoft cares about the public perception of forcing people to use their own store or not. Currently, they do care about forcing people onto clients, but that might not always be the case forever.
  
  There are people who would be okay if it were Sony making the acquisition, but I want to believe that most people who are against it feel that no large company should be allowed to buy another large company.
  It’s like, does no one remember what Microsoft did in the 90s? They were literally forbidding PC manufacturers from not selling any systems that didn’t include windows.
  This deal is bad. It rewards shitty individuals and shitty companies, and hurts consumers and employees. This deal will be a calendar marker of when the gaming industry started to fall. Like when Disney bought Marvel and LucasArts.
- This can't be any worse than the pile of shit blizzard became, and Activision had always been.
  
  If they are truly a pile of shit, then they should fail. MS just wants 2 things: 1) big name games to drive purchase of their console, 2) that sweeeeet MTX money from CoD and King.
- Nah, I don't see things this way. Microsoft has been generous with its IP, in contrast to Sony, which keeps its games (and third party games, as was the case with Street Fighter 5) exclusive. Microsoft has licensed its biggest titles to the Switch and even the Playstation 4, and it has a history of cross-platform publishing that goes back decades. For instance, games in the Banjo-Kazooie series were released for the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS. There's no reason to believe Microsoft will change that strategy, especially with the Xbox Series lagging so far behind its competitors in sales.
  If Microsoft suddenly tightens the reins on its IP, consumers will spite them for it. After the Xbox One debacle, they know better than to force unwanted changes to the status quo of this industry.
  
  They already changed their strategy, Starfield will be exclusive.
  
  Nintendo is not a competitor for MS or Sony. They operate in different spheres of gaming and Nintendo has no intention of competing with them.
  Is Halo on Playstation? Of course not. MS has already said future Bethesda games (not Starfield, it has a contract) will NOT be coming to PlayStation. MS has even "lamented" that exclusivity is how you compete in current console markets.
With how shitty Blizzard has been the past few years, this may be a positive. I'm not saying I trust Microsoft but I certainly don't trust Blizzard to anything outside of Warcraft anymore. They even mess that up every other expansion.
- Isn't Kotic out after this is all done?
  At the very least, that sounds positive.
  
  Yes. He’s gone if this goes through.
  
  He's going to have a golden parachute
- I'm just going to go ahead and assume that nothing will change for the better.
- The one good thing that might come from this is a change in their abusive work environment
Microsoft went P2W when it shoulda just git gud smh

55 comments