CMA surprised sector by saying deal would give Seattle firm undue power to shape cloud gaming
Microsoft’s attempted acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the development conglomerate behind games including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush Saga, has beenby the UK’s competition watchdog in a surprise move. The $70bn purchase would have been the largest in gaming history but now, unless the two companies can convince a tribunal to overturn the ban on appeal, it is dead globally.
With a new entry pushed out every year by the three rotating studios that share development duty, supported in some way by nearly every other developer owned by the Activision wing of the conglomerate, Call of Duty is a phenomenon: its Warzone multiplayer mode alone was played by more than 6 million people in its first 24 hours.Sort of, but in a more roundabout way than many expected.
But the CMA made the unusual decision to instead focus on the deal’s effect on cloud gaming, a relatively small industry that involves streaming games to mobile phones and TVs without specialised hardware. There, the CMA said, Microsoft had few reasons not to withhold games like Call of Duty from competitors: the industry is small enough that it would not lose any sales, but might manage to stop competitors from even becoming a threat to its dominant position in the first place.
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