The title is a little misleading. This ruling is only regarding the preliminary injunction. There is still an ongoing suit with the FTC and we will need to wait for that to be resolved. However, knowing how these things go, Microsoft will make a ton of promises about creating jobs, keeping their content available to everyone, and agreeing to play fair. They will get approval and immediately turn around and terminate a ton of jobs, start making things exclusive, and backtrack on their promises. Then…nothing will happen. There will be no repercussions. Rinse and repeat.
Thank the GOP for basically ridding the US of antitrust law, which is now basically no longer a thing.
contemporary democrats are not any better, they make hella frequent concessions to anti-competitive business practices under the guise of licensing or stimulus
This is why US democrats are considered center-right compared to the rest of the world.
What makes the rest of the world any better than US by using them as a metric.
The fact their Overton windows aren’t so skewed that a center right party is considered “the left”?
US politics is a few hundred years old whereas European and other’s are thousands of years old? The rest of the world’s political perspective has a bit more precedent than ours.
True.
And then the moment a union starts getting buck, out come the democrats with the freshly-oiled whips…
Far from perfect? Yes. Bad? Very often. Not any better than Republicans when it comes to corporate interests? Absolutely not.
The guys who claim capitalism works because a free market will create better things through competition. Guess they weren’t so much for the competition stuff and just became puppets for corporations. We also have it completely legal to openly bribe politicians which makes zero fucking sense, except we call it lobbying so it somehow becomes okay.
Only pure liberals think leaving the free market by itself with minimal regulation is a good thing. Capital attracts capital and becomes basically a snowball.
But is the solution a market controlled by a centralized entity? You just pointed out politicians can also be corrupted. So… Giving more power to an entity that can be corrupted is the solution?
The problem is corruption. Any system you can propose can be fucked up by corruption. The justice system, politicians and government can be corrupted under any system because they are human.
If I’m wrong, just propose any system and I’ll tell you how it crumbles because of corruption.
Ideally that’s where democracy is supposed to kick in, to stomp out corruption when it occurs. Obviously that’s not what’s happening and we don’t have a democracy anyways. Especially with bribing being completely legal.
Only thing worse than free market capitalism is state sponsored. Decades of the fed flooding the big banks with capital to loan, taxes taken from everyone but the largest corps, and regulatory capture (see copy right for this topic), and we get corporations that demand difficult anti trust actions just to slow down.
That’s not a black and white system, it’s not one or the other. Every system will have aspects of both in them.
Thats not true there are systems that are non-market, non-capitalist, and non-statist.
I think they’re still there, just haven’t been trotted out in recent history. And mergers keep getting approved.
The last merger that got blocked was almost 50 years ago, I believe. So yeah…it’s probably dead.
Which was that? Also, DraftKings and FanDuel got rejected about 10 years ago
I want to say it was in the telecoms industry. But I completely forgot about that merger you mentioned. Thanks for reminding me.
Didn’t they just block the Nvidia ARM merger a few years back?
I thought that was the UK’s Competition Markets Authority that blocked the ARM deal.
My mistake then. Thank you.
It’s my understanding that Microsoft can now close the deal and acquire ABK before the FTC trial would even take place (as soon as July 18th, though unlikely given the new UK CMA negotiations). What happens to the suit if the merger is already complete?
Probably a fine that’s simply justified as “operating costs”. It’s actually kinda bullshit, they shouldn’t be allowed to buy up all the NA competition. Next is probably EA. Thankfully Sony saw this coming and started investing in new studios and IP.
How does one bring Teddy Roosevelt back from the grave? I’m uh…asking for a friend? Yeah. Let’s go with that.
We could generate infinite energy by harnessing the force of Teddy Roosevelt rolling in his grave rn.
I’d be pretty surprised if MS is allowed to purchase another huge publisher. Zenimax was pretty small, but ABK is huge. But who knows at this point…
MSFT could purchase Congress itself and get away with it thanks to Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
Capital wins again. If only the FTC didn’t sit on its ass for the last 40 years, maybe such market consolidation wouldn’t be allowed and normalized.
Also shout-out to this comm. The Beehaw community seems delighted. You can sometimes really tell which instances skew toward leftists vs liberals
The fact that it was challenged at all is a huge step in the right direction. Couple of years ago, the FTC wouldn’t even bat an eye with these mergers. The new chair, Lina Khan seems to be determined to reduce the power of monopolies.
Which is a good thing, if this isn’t obvious.
The problem lies with the complete out of touch judges now.
Oh no, those judged seem touched. Maybe the need another sponsored yaht trip to clear their heads.
If only the FTC didn’t sit on its ass for the last 40 years
That’s more on the money than you think. Microsoft mostly won because the FTC didn’t clamp down on Sony being anticompetitive which “forced” Microsoft to make these acquisitions. This situation is bad, but the alternative with Sony exclusivity deals all over the place was worse.
No I think this is worse. It’s not a deal. These are all first party studios now essentially, through nothing but the purchasing power of a trillion dollar company. They will and can be as locked as Microsoft prefers.
There were 360 deals before PS4/PS5 deals. There were Xbox One deals even during Sony dominance, like Tomb Raider. Sony is just one player, but the others are not angels.
Nothing here stops those deals from continuing.
What has happened is that the second or third largest third party publisher’s studios and “IP” now belong to a first party publisher.
And I predict more acquisitions, and thus consolidation, will come from Sony.
I know Microsoft is a behemoth, but compared to Bobby Kotick it seems like an upgrade, no?
At the end of the day, acquisitions are always bad for customers
This is one of the rare occasions where it’s a good thing. Activision has been a shit show for years. I have a lot more trust in Microsoft to run things.
Market share being consolidated among fewer companies in an industry is always bad for the consumers in that industry. If Activision was meant to go down, it should be through the mechanism of competition, not acquisition.
It might be better in the short to medium term but it will be worse in the long term.
The enemy of my enemy is not my friend applies here I think. Kotick sucks and needs to be gone and I’m glad for that but I don’t think this solution to that is much better long term for gamers and consumers.
I personally just feel indifferent to the merger. Definitely won’t say Microsoft has been the most guilty of game exclusivity, considering Sony have been pushing timed exclusivity on PlayStation. Nintendo doesn’t have take that scrutiny only because their main catalouge are 1st party games.
That said, it sucks that the only way to make someone as repulsively negligent to workers as Kotick depart is by letting him have a golden parachute to another company. Also, I just don’t trust Microsoft to handle ABK that well. So far their strategy has been to just scoop up studios and expect them to make smash hits without really helping them innovate. It’s that kind of attitude that left Rare a mere shadow of its former self.
You can “rah rah” about exclusivity all day long. What needs to be acknowledged is how huge this is in terms of developers under one company. As far as I can think of, there’s never been anything like it. I don’t think it’s gonna be for the better, I mean this is the same.company responsible for this
GFWL was one of the worst attempts to compete with Steam I’ve ever seen, and also one of the worst software experiences I’ve ever had. I never got more than an hour into GTA4 because of it and how intolerant of bullshit software I am. Valve should have put their feet down back then and said “no secondary launcher dependencies”.
Game pass is OK in terms of value if you play lots of games, but the software it uses is not great, despite being leagues better than GFWL. Windows also sucks, but I’m stuck with it due to work :/
I might be a little more upset if I could remember the last activision blizzard game I felt was worth playing.
Overwatch 1 the first two years or so was pretty sick. Was definitely one of the most funs I’ve played. Now it’s just skin shop with some maps to dress up in.
Pretty sure all they’ve done since 2020 is a few cods, a crash game, Diablo, and over watch 2. I really think everyone lamenting about this being the end of gaming is overreacting
You’re not excited about Call Of Duty number 24?
Horse armor angst be damned. Diablo 4 was decently fun. But the grind is slooooow.
Seems like a foregone conclusion now that this will go through. Unless I’m mistaken, the only speed bump left is the UK CMA appeal in two weeks.
The worst bit is, it seems like the CMA will negotiate with them. This might be well and truly over.
I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t go through. I stand to benefit from the acquisition as a GP subscriber but I’m definitely worried about corporate consolidation. At least Bobby Kotick will go away
This is one of the few corporate mergers I think could make things better because Blizzard is just THAT bad.
Plus this means the SC themed Halo clone I’ve wanted for the better part of 2 decades could be a thing.
Yeah I think I agree with you on the merger, but I’m of the wait and see mindset more than picking a side.
Still waiting on SC Ghost? I remember buying game magazines and being so hyped for it to come out.
Yeah, I’m a tiny bit optimistic, but only time will tell how this ends up going. Also Activision really is such a fucked up state right now, that if they end up making it even worse, so what? I really only see two options: eather it will be better or continue be shit like they now are.
I will forever be waiting on Starcraft Ghost.
Plus this means the SC themed Halo clone I’ve wanted for the better part of 2 decades could be a thing.
Dear god I will lose my shit.
Right but when will Bobby leave… i believe it when I see it.
That’s depressing.
The CMA appeal is covered in the article. Both parties have requested to delay the appeal so they can negotiate modifying the merger to address CMA concerns about cloud gaming. It’s going through.
It went through because the judge thought that the only relevant thing was where CoD would be, and that 10yrs = forever. Neither is true though.
Well this is a good way to filter out how many Sony fanboys are here lol
I mean fuck them both at this point. I’m tired of AAA shitty games, and platform lockins.
I’m all for this merger. Maybe Microsoft can use it as leverage against Sony to avoid needless exclusivity
This is a bad take. Any and all large corporate mergers are bad.
Microsoft gaming strategy does benefit gamers. Which counteracts the problem of losing a competitor.
Microsoft doesnt care about profits on single products much compared to the grand strategy they follow. For example AoE4 and all the aoe franchise doesnt really give a lot of profit Microsoft would care about, yet they keep investing and updating it bc they like it and like the strategic benefit.
Not caring as strictly about profit means you dont get as many greedy microtransactions and more balanced approaches. The game pass is also a really cheap deal if you play variety
No subscription deal is ever a good financial decision long term and companies know that. Most people keep their subscriptions running and will end up paying more long term.
That’s not even getting into the “ownership” vs renting aspect.
Netflix used to be cheap and look where we are now. Give it a few years and Game pass will suffer the same fate.
They already have cut benefits and raised prices. I expect more price raises in the coming years
They went up from $15 to $17 or so; the small single digit shift does kind of make me think they’ve eyed the big “2-0” as the price point where a lot of people might reconsider.
I’m certainly considering the benefit of it each month, and so far I’ve consciously decided to keep it. If it’s ever poor value like Netflix, it’s going (that said, Netflix has introduced enough shows that I have weighed whether to resubscribe)
They used to under 10, and sharable, now for me and 3 family members its 51 dollars…
Oh, I guess I was referring to Ultimate. I don’t think regular one-system pricing has gone up yet, it’s still $10. I’m just going for Ultimate for other perks.
Grandmas tend not to have gamepass
Grandmas, young people. Most people are notoriously far from financially savvy. Many overpay or fail to track their subscriptions.. If you didn’t know at least one person paying for a subscription they didn’t actually use in the last month I would be surprised.
You have to keep up with your gaming habits long term to keep up with the subscription costs, basically never replay anything (especially not long RPGs that can take you months to finish), not waste subscription time playing non-GamePass games, or remember to cancel. And Microsoft, like most subscription services, are banking on people maintaining subscriptions they aren’t fully using.
My other stance is that Activision is so shitty to its workers and customers, let’s give someone else a try
I just want to see Bobby Fucking Kotick gone.
Yeah he’s a real piece of shit. That alone is a good reason
I don’t care who wins. I just need Kotick to lose.
See, I agree with this angle, but at the same time it kind of feels like a Pyrrhic victory.
Microsoft doesnt have a bad track record in gaming and doesn’t have greedy approaches. They like to dump money without forcing profits. It is a win for gamers
Eh, depending on where you’re at, not so much is lost
Further consolidation is a major loss
Correct.
This, I’m not quite understanding. What do you mean?
So far there’s nothing that says this is a loss for anyone other than Sony not able to do exclusive COD things or keep COD off Game pass
I expect this to make exclusivity even worse
Why? Microsoft hasnt been pushing for it like Sony has. Sony has been crazy anti competitive.
One company buying another is always anti-competitive. The literal definition of removing competition.
Future Bethesda games are exclusive. They weren’t going to be, but they are now.
Well yeah, that’s the point. Maybe Sony will stop forcing exclusivity and sign a deal with MS to get Bethesda games back on PS and FF and others on Xbox.
That would be fantastic, but it’s really hard for me to have that much faith in corporations. We’ll see though. I was really looking forward to seeing Bethesda make another RPG for PSVR, but I’m sure the odds of that happening now are less than zero thanks to Microsoft.
Or just get a PC and it literally doesn’t matter lol
Comments like this kind of suck when you no longer have the kind of money to “just get a pc”.
It does matter though. Can’t play a lot of old PS exclusives on PC. That is starting to change for some new games though.
Great a duoloply again. That’s what I want instead of independent game studios just making games and letting people play them on what ever platform they want.
Part of the problem is that since Sony is so heavily invested in exclusives, if Microsoft doesn’t have any exclusives and all their games also come out of Playstation, that’s incentive for people to purchase a PS5 over an Xbox because they know they’ll get all of the games that both Sony and Microsoft make. So even if Microsoft doesn’t want to do exclusives, they kind of have to if they want to keep people from just purchasing their competitor’s console.
Xbox are not trying to sell consoles, they are trying to sell game pass.
Or they can be like me, just get a PC and if you really need a console, a cheap Xbox.
PC gaming is a plus and game pass is a plus. Sony will eventually give me their games. I’ve bought multiples of every Sony system in the US since the PS1 through the 4. But I’m done with them
I might pay for the cloud gaming service just long enough to play starfield then cancel
I hope there’s a dollar deal in there so I can demo the game
I would love to hear how this could possibly make exclusivity better. The only possible change is that all of the ABK library becomes Xbox/PC exclusive.
If Microsoft could stop pushing for needless expense exclusivety you would have a stronger point. DX needs to die so gaming can move on, for example.
