"In a ruling submitted today, Judge Corley said the following:
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. "
A lot of people speculate that Microsoft would try to work around the UK’s CMA ruling against the merger by not publishing any Activision-Blizzard games in the UK.
To me that sounds like bullshit that wouldn’t fly, especially since MS has so many of their own offices in the UK and their own critical businesses that could be impacted too. But I’m not a lawyer so take my “that’s bullshit” with a heaping pile of salt. Although I haven’t seen any lawyers speculate the above either, so take that with a similar pile of salt too. But that’s the reasoning behind the statements to that effect.
Yeah that’s what I meant! Thanks for explaining to them :)
Gotcha. Super concise, thanks!