Blizzard can say no but once Microsoft owns them it doesn’t matter.
And Microsoft has made it pretty clear that these games are coming to gamepass.
This was in response to a rumor going around that a gamepass release was imminent. I don’t think it was intended to mean “no possibility ever”.
Resistance is futile, all your base are belong to us.
It’s not going to be on Game Pass earlier than first big paid DLC comes to D4.
Since the Microsoft acquisition was just approved, wouldn’t that make this Phil Spencer’s decision?
Oh it was approved? Goodie, more of the gaming industry gets vacuumed up into 2 companies.
The CMA in the UK is still trying to block it. Appeal is in two weeks. That said, even if they were successful I get the feeling that MS would just do a business carve out in the UK and acquire ActiBlizz anyway
Based on my (admittedly limited) understanding of the situation, you’re right. Microsoft have already hinted that if the UK interferes with the deal, theyd stop doing business there rather than pull out of the acquisition.
Wouldn’t that mean that the whole of UK ould no longer use Windows OS? That sounds like it would be incredibly damaging to its economy.
I guess another reason for why critical infrastructure shouldn’t be based on proprietary stuff…
I believe the UK block only applies to the Xbox Gaming portion of Microsoft, but I dont know for sure.
On the upside, it would lead to vast improvements in national cyber security.
Only when it actually goes through, and companies are very, very careful to not intermingle during an ongoing merger as that leads to problems that kill mergers
Just for the record, the merger is not happening yet. Even if it’s approved in the US after the FTC lost it’s bid to pause it recently, it has still been denied in the UK. That has not been reversed and the appeal process for that typically takes longer than the deal would be possible. MS is seeking an expedited appeal.
Now, that being said, the UK’s reasoning for stopping it was weirdly bad (cloud gaming monopoly), but that’s what they went with, so who knows.
This was literally the only reason I cared about the Microsoft/ Activision fiasco. 🤷
It’ll be on there if/once the acquisition actually goes through. Same language was used by Bethesda pre-acquisition and all their games are on GP
