"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. "
This is really a tough one. I hate consolidation, but I also really hate Bobby Kottick.
Well, you’re really gonna hate the fat pay out he gets.
He was always going to get it though
Yeah, in no version of how this played out was he going to not receive hundreds of millions of dollars. That was never an option.
I don’t care how much he gets as long as he isn’t in charge anymore.
Kotick gets rewarded by the deal going through. Billions of dollars from the sale. Worst case for him after that is a few hundred million from a golden parachute if he’s fired. We have no real reason to think he will (or won’t, to be clear) be fired though, so there’s a very real chance this is full reward for him: giant piles of money and continues to get to run Activision-Blizzard, just with Microsoft bosses above him.
The deal going through isn’t something you want if you hate him.
He was filthy rich anyway, a few hundred million more doesn’t make any difference. If the deal gets him out, then that’s still a small win, despite Microsoft owning even more developers
The only reason I’m for the merger is that I know how much Microsoft can affect a corporations executive structure. I would hope they are already planning to replace him already, but either way he won’t last when he gets tossed into MS’ culture.
At least, that is what I’m hopping.
Is there any news what will happen to him? Usually on buy out like this, the previous CEO will be appointed as VP or other executive in parent company
At least Kotick is capable of making good game franchises before killing them with endless sequels. Microsoft is completely incompetent at making games unless it’s a driving sim. This is the final nail in Bliizard’s coffin. Bye bye Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo.
It potentially could have opposite effect. Spencer said that one of the IPs he wanted to revive was StarCraft
World of Starcraft MMO inc
Microsoft is completely incompetent at making games
I mean, AoE was pretty awesome
I think that’s the point of the Xbox Game Studios. They purchase a bunch of existing games studios with good talent and let them mostly manage themselves and their own games direction.
MS doesn’t want full control anyway because yeah, they aren’t great at it. They just want to buy enough companies that they get the money from the good games. Then they’ll pull the good talent out of the shitty studios and shut them down.
I remember once upon a time browsing the Microsoft game studios site and getting excited for the upcoming RTS releases
I don’t think Kotick was really in the picture when all their game franchises were being created. The only thing he’s good at is acquiring already successful games and companies and then squeezing everything he can out of them before they turn to shit.
He made Call of Duty from the ashes of Medal of Honor Allied Assault by helping form the studio Infinity Ward. He wisely bought Guitar Hero from a small device manufacturer. Under his watch Tony Hawk and Spyro made several hundred millions before he ran them into the ground. I hate his guts, but I’m not going to deny his business acumen. There’s a chance MS doesn’t even replace him and he can go further into MS executive suite.
He’s a POS in the industry. He’s great at finding good products, or even diamonds in the rough, and absolutely destroying them in some way. Usually in the form of MTX or some other abhorrent method that us gamers tend to hate.
I don’t think anyone denies his ability to find great software, it’s what he does after it that everyone hates.
What’s the point of all these lawsuits over mergers when every single time there is clearly a monopolistic merger it just goes through anyways.
The issue in this instance is that’s its hard to prove that a company not even close to leading to the market is going to somehow dominate that market through a single (albeit large) acquisition.
It’s not a “single” acquisition though. Microsoft have been acquiring huge companies (Bethesda, for example), hit games (Minecraft), and key development parters from competition (remember Rare?) from the beginning of Xbox.
To think that they spent all of those billions of dollars to buy out everything but that they aren’t going to use that to benefit their platforms, is just crazy to me.
Just like they said in one of their internal emails, they are in a unique position to spend their competition out of business, and the entire industry will be worse for it.
Microsoft have been acquiring huge companies (Bethesda, for example), hit games (Minecraft), and key development parters from competition (remember Rare?) from the beginning of Xbox.
And yet, they are still in third place in the gaming market behind Sony and Nintendo. If those acquisitions didn’t turn Microsoft into a monopoly already, what will be significantly different if they acquire AVB?
They’re 3rd place this generation mainly because they release one big exclusive per year, like Redfall, which turns out to be utter dogshit. It’s not because they don’t have an actual treasure trove of IP to draw from or a lack of development resources.
While Nintendo is putting out games like Tears of the Kingdom, Microsoft produces boring, samey, minorly iterative crap year after year. Halo and Gears went from being Xbox icons to unsurprising announcements at formulaic E3 press conferences, because Microsoft only seems to know how to beat dead horses.
Let me ask you this simple question: how have gamers or the industry benefited from Microsoft’s past acquisitions?
I can’t see any way that allowing Microsoft to own (and probably squander) an ever-growing library of IP is good for me or anyone outside of the company.
Gamers benefited tremendously. GamePass is a game changer and having access to day 1 first (and often 3rd) party releases is amazing. Devs are happy too. Many publicly admitted that without GP some of their games would not launch at all.
While you are right that MS has released mostly duds this generation, it’s not fair to paint them as completely without any benefits to gamers or industry.
Yeah, gamers will definitely benefit greatly when GamePass becomes the only way to access certain new releases and they start upping the monthly price. This is every service subscription ever. Once they have the market lead they’ll be free to up price, offer shittier service etc.
when GamePass becomes the only way to access certain new releases
Microsoft has shown no indication that they want to move away from selling games. Shit, they started releasing games on Steam after they spun up gamepass. Seems to me they’ll take your money however you want to hand it to them be it a “rental” or flat out buying it.
I know people like GamePass, but I’m not sure that spending $17/mo to own nothing in the end is what I consider a win… Especially since GamePass feels like a prime example of Microsoft digging into their deep company pockets to outspend their competition with what seems to be an unsustainable loss-leader.
I also have no idea whether it benefits or hurts 3rd party developers.
Gamepass as it currently exists will be gone within a decade. This is the Netflix or Amazon model at play. Run service cheaply until it hits critical mass, then start ramping the price up to turn it profitable. You won’t be getting unlimited $70 games on launch for $15/month for forever.
Even if the above is wrong: a successful GP will fundamentally alter the way games are made. Content is aggressively and constantly tweaked or changed structurally in order to optimize profit. You know why search results on Google are garbage? Because people found a way to take advantage of that system to make the most money; doing so pushed out the good results. Same reason why all the biggest youtube channels have the content creator making a stupid face in the thumbnail with a clickbait title. Same reason why film has moved towards cinematic universes lately, or why so many IPs have moved towards the TV format (its for streaming).
Consumer oriented content changes when the revenue model changes. If GP is influential enough, games will change to optimize for whatever method makes the most money there — and that model will not be the one that exists currently. If Microsoft pays them by hours of playtime, games will become bloated with more and more empty content or arbitrary difficulty. If DLC continues to not be included, more and more core game content will shift towards DLC that becomes more expensive. Etc.
Cementing Gamepass is anything but a “tremendous” benefit for gamers.
@LetMeEatCake @diskape Everything you said sounds about right. I have a hard time believing it would work out that way in reality though. MS would for sure pull that but would people tolerate it? Most of the scummy stuff I see people tolerate comes from games and companies that they previously enjoyed before microtransactions or degrading quality. If MS just ups gamepass to 25 or something a month, I think people would just not buy it.
Game Pass is already profitable, as said by Phil Spencer.
The goal with game pass is to have enough subscribers giving guaranteed revenue to finance all their first party games for the year along with the payouts for third party games. Once a person is subscribed and in the ecosystem, Microsoft then get 30% of every third party game and DLC they buy. That’s where the real money is. Game Pass is there to get them hooked. With MS’s goals of 4 AAA first party games a year, they need say $400-$600mil in revenue from game pass a year for that. They’re already over half the number of subscriptions needed for the upper end of that revenue @$15/month. Adding COD will make that number explode.
That’s a lot of negative “what ifs”. We can only judge by current situation not by what something may or may not become in the future. This is not Minority Report video games edition.
Shift towards DLC and worst, season passes and micro transactions, already happened without GP. We live in that world. GP here is not to blame.
No matter how you slice it - right now GP is tremendous value for gamers. It finally forced competitors to introduce some form of their own subscription service. Sony/Nintendo fans like them, and without GP these services would not exist.
I’m lucky to have 3 main consoles and PC. In order of money spend per game its highest PS5 > Switch > PC > XSX lowest. Exact reverse order is # of games played on given platform. I spend less for GP than for Netflix and get way more entertainment out of it. The other consoles are just for very expensive exclusives.
GP model allows me to find and try games that I normally wouldn’t buy. Forza Horizon 5, Immortality or Pentiment are just 3 examples.
Studios don’t need to be owned by Microsoft for games to be on GamePass.
In one specific hardware ranking. Consoles sales don’t quantify market dominance. Game sales do. And with these recent acquisitions msft will be dominating game sales.
Theoretically, the way it works is each one of those sales should go through until you hit the one that would push them over the edge to monopoly. You don’t block a purchase because of purchases you expect them to make in the future (unless stuff has already been signed)
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Well the good thing here is that there was several concessions MS has made in contracts to ensure it’s mitigated. That’s why it’s necessary to go through the trial even if it isn’t likely going to be in your favor. Small victories
So that you think rich people have rules. Justice theater
Oh great, more consolidation and monopoly building.
'Tis the era of Indy Games, my friend. Abandon the Graphically amazing games that cannot be built upon passion due to have dev teams of 10,000 strong. Instead, embrace the smaller titles developed by less than 10 people whom cry with joy at the prospect of showering you with entertainment and art.
You’re saying this 3 weeks before BG3 drops lol
This is the best year for big studios in a loooong time
What is bg3?
Butt guzzler 9
Baldur’s Gate 3
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The sequel to BG2
Eh, not really, as far as I see.
Just don’t buy it or wait a couple years to grab it at good discount. Or if you’re feeling extra feisty, take the high seas.
I’ve already purchased BG3, and Larian is one of very few companies I will pre-order anything from solely due to my desire to contribute to them making more games.
The genuine love they demonstrated during D:OS 1/2 has me sold on their development style as basically “the old Blizzard” and until that changes, I will donate to kickstarters, preorder games, whole 9 yards. Making the D:OS Enhanced editions free, separate installs, with the amount of additions and quality they added, was just next-level for a game company.
Their community engagement and response during the BG3 Early Access only cemented this belief for me.
The more companies we get like Larian working on different genres, the better the gaming industry would be.
I was talking more about the big studio releases in general. I also recommend keeping an eye on the studio if you love them that much, it’s not uncommon for core devs responsible for making a studio great in the first place quitting and leaving behind an empty shell.
Or worse, they find a more profitable franchise and turns your favorite one into a side project. Looking at you, From.
I think you should watch any Panel From Hell about BG3 and see firsthand just how unfounded these fears are with Larian.
Also I don’t really get the distaste for From? They just made Elden Ring, arguably one of the greatest games of all time. Their AC game is gonna be lit AF.
I don’t hate From, I just don’t care for souls-like and so I’ve been starved for AC games for years. Hopefully the mechanics from souls won’t seep into AC.
A fool and his money is soon parted.
I’ve got money to spare and I’m quite confident in my spending choices.
Facts, battlebit remastered is going to go down as one of the best releases of the year, and I think it was developed by just 3 people
- By Steam Deck
- Stop buying AAA games
- Subscribe to Humble Choice
- Enjoy gaming again
What are some good venues to discover indie games? I’ve been checking YT channels like Wanderbots and Splattercatgaming and the only subreddit I still go back to is GameDeals but I’m sure there’s a lot of places to get to know about new and old indies of specific genres
As much as I hate Activision Blizzard as a publisher and Bobby Kotick as a person, I feel this level of corporate consolidation is a terrible thing for the games industry and gamers.
There is so much more to this than CoD being on Playstation or not…
Break Microsoft, Meta and Google. They will kill humanity
I don’t care about “monopolies” and “consolidation”
I just care about the possibility of Guitar Hero being revived god dammit
Clone hero is fun.
I gave up on guitar hero after they implemented the greedy “tokens” model on GH: Live. It was very lame. You had to play a radio station of sorts to get tokens. Tokens could be used to play a song of your choice. When you ran out you had to play the radio station or buy more with real money lol.
I love CH. Haven’t played in years though.
GH:TV was super cool though in my opinion, but yeah the token stuff was dumb. I spent a lot of time just jamming to music videos. That’s basically all I did in Love lol
Does Clone Hero have the character customization thing? It’s totally pointless, but I enjoyed having my custom band on the stage.
I’m not sure, I played with a bland black background and just had the note highway. There are backgrounds you can add in but you have to tinker to do it
I’m hoping for DJ hero lol
I still want the DLC
I just want THPS 3+4 :( CURSE YOU, ACTIVISION!!!
The only games I ever sold my soul for were eudemon online, guitar hero, for a short while destiny, and stardew valley.
I have been bored with most games that have came out throughout the timeline but guitar hero holds a special place in my heart and I would absolutely love to have a new one come out.
We tried the band one a while back and it just didn’t hit the same.
I too became addicted to destiny during beyond light and witch queen. I finally kicked the habit before lightfall. Based on the reviews, looks like we made the right choice !
Looks like we did! Good times though.
I know a lot of people (rightfully) are against it . But the way Activision/Blizzard has been run has been shambles and needs at least some kind of change. Plus the scrutiny has lead to several concessions by MS that will help curtail future antitrust issues for the most part.
They’re run more effectively than Microsoft has run their gaming division for the past ~15 years or so… Microsoft’s gaming leadership has seen one of the most valuable gaming IPs, Halo, flounder again and again and again. They closed all their game studios and spent a whole generation with minimal first party exclusives, they did I don’t know how much damage to Arkane with Redfall…
More generally, Microsoft’s approach to leading their game studios is to leave them to run the way the studio was ran pre-acquisition. Activision-Blizzard is not going to see major changes to the way they run if this deal does go through (pending CMA). Microsoft will Activision to be run the way it is now, and only intervene if profits dip too much (considering Halo, though, that might take quite the dip).
I don’t get the assumption that Activision is going to see some major cleanup from this. They won’t.
they did I don’t know how much damage to Arkane with Redfall…
Microsoft aren’t to blame for Redfall. Redfall started development in 2018 but Microsoft didn’t buy them til 2021. Redfall sucks because Arkane Austin made a bad game without any input from MS.
Microsoft didn’t close all their studios either. In fact they’ve barely closed any actual studios that have made xbox games. They closed ones that were bad though. Lionhead closed because Fable Legends was bad. I was in the beta, and it was not a good game. It would have absolutely flopped and killed the studio. They closed Ensemble almost 15 years ago. That’s about it really.
Devs can do no wrong, it’s always the publishers.
Well in that case it’s still not Microsoft, it’s Bethesda.
Well at least it’s gonna clean up the really horrible practices at Activision Blizzard with all the SA allegations. MS is infinitely better for the workers than ABK.
That only happens if Microsoft cleans house, which hasn’t been their MO yet. It could happen. It’s just not certain to happen. There’s no real reason to predict it will or will not happen in either direction.
You’re right , MS has been very hands off with their studios since Bungie (they may have overcorrected a little too much). But I think there’s been dialogue of this changing especially after the Redfall dev cycle (very surprised Bethesda forced Arkane into such a departure from their regular MO). This will be very necessary especially with ABK.
I haven’t seen anything from Microsoft to indicate this. What did you see from them that makes you think that?
The biggest sign was the upheaval of 343 leadership recently. Finally being rid of Bonnie Ross will do wonders for the team hopefully. I believe I’ve seen Matt Booty ( what a name) mention how they’ve given more power to the team who came in and fixed MCC. Plus they’ve recently mentioned how other dev studios might also get involved with the franchise.
Plus they’ve recently changed the team responsible for Perfect Dark as well. Hopefully it’s a sign of things to come (who would have thought people would be WANTING them to become more hands on).
Hmm are they ? Yes 343 has been meh. But I’ve enjoyed the new Gears games, Forza hasn’t missed a step, Psychonauts may have been my GOTY, Ori has become one of my favorite series’s of all time, HiFi Rush was a surprise hit as well as Pentiment. Also the issue with Arkane was Bethesda mandating them to make it a GaaS before their acquisition with MS; other wise they were hands off (which they’ve done to a fault).
Meanwhile ATVI recently has been Sekiro and Diablo? I’m probably forgetting some games for sure. And let’s not forget all the SA that have run rampant at that company unfortunately :(
I think after recent developments and from how MS has been changing their tune, it feels they’ve learnt from their extreme hands off position. At least I hope so. Hopefully they get to that perfect middle ground that Sony has achieved
On games side, ActiBlizz is much better than MS. I’m more concerned if they instead become like other MS studio, releasing games every few years and forgotten immediately
That’s a bit of a massive overgeneralization. The list of games studios under MS is pretty large now and a lot of them make great games:
343 Industries The Coalition Compulsion Games Double Fine Productions The Initiative inXile Entertainment Mojang Studios Ninja Theory Obsidian Entertainment Playground Games Rare Turn 10 Studios Undead Labs World’s Edge Xbox Game Studios Publishing Bethesda Softworks Alpha Dog Games Arkane Studios id Software MachineGames Roundhouse Studios Tango Gameworks ZeniMax Online Studios
The thing is, MS is usually hands off for a few years after they acquire a company. Game launches can be hit and miss based on how good the individual studios are. I don’t think just because they’re owned by MS is a good indicator of whether or not they make good games.
I wouldn’t expect Activision/Blizzard to change much. They’re a huge company. The only good thing would be maybe getting rid of Bobby Kotick
Based on the track record, they might not be the ones to whip Activision/Blizzard in to shape.
Honestly, I have my doubts that even call of duty will survive this.
While I absolutely hate the fact that the gaming industry is being consolidated into a few massive corps, I am very excited for the entire Activision Blizzard umbrella to be under new leadership.
It’s amazing to me how short-sighted this decision is. Yeah sure keep wide access to CoD for 10 years to get the FTC off their back and then watch all that fall away immediately after. For us this is potentially decent gains in the short term but certainly contributes to this industry turning to crap long term.
potentially decent gains in the short term but certainly contributes to this industry turning to crap long term.
Hmm where have I seen that before
What’s really nice is that the big studio games are shit anyways, they’ve made it easy to enjoy life without feeling like you’re missing out on some dumb crappy games that rip you off.
I hate this consolidation of the gaming market but Microsoft seems to not have sex pest as direct bosses so that’s a good thing… makes me feel less scummy if I buy d4
Wait until they set Edge as the default browser every time you start one of their games
Edge is my default…
I feel like the “Edge is bad” stereotype is the new “Apple only has a one button mouse.”
People were still making fun of that years after it was no longer the case.
I don’t have anything personally against Edge as a browser. But what irks me to no end are all the way Microsoft tries to shove it down your throat. I will never use Edge for that reason only, even if it were to become the best browser by a mile.
That’s completely fair. I use Windows and I do end user support so it just makes sense to me to live in the environment that my users do. They use chrome and edge so I just keep edge as my default because it’s usable and it lets me just be bare bones and always have the most up to date knowledge on one of the pieces of software that’s there
I mean I used chrome before and they both use the same underlying bits and since I use it by default 1)as end user support I can always have in my back pocket knowing the defaults by heart 2)it doesn’t bug me. The usability is the same so… unless I wanted to switch to Firefox it’s the best option and Firefox is so wildly different from what my user base where I work uses there’s no point I’d rather be in the environment they are in…. If edge was as bad as IE then yeah I’d not use it but it works
Edgelord…
Software so sharp you’ll get cut ON THE EDGE
Wait until all ActiBlizz bosses given a job in Microsoft
I mean could that happen? Sure. But the people that where most at fault would be redundant at Microsoft so they will get paid to go away. Half the reason this started was because of the bullshit coming out about Bobby and the boys
Be honest, you bought D4 anyway, didn’t you?
Nope. I thought bout it but as much as I’d like it because I love a good dopamine hit from an ARPG I just kept playing totk and kept away from blizzard. An SC3 would probably be harder for me if I’m completely honest but so far it is not in my library
Fucking hell. We really need to shatter all these cancerous megacorps.
RIP any new blizzard games in the UK
UK will probably still get the games, they’ll just go through different publishers.
The CMA agreed to negotiate so I think it’s likely that a deal will be made soon. The UK doesn’t want to be left out
I believe the CMA have opened up talks to get further assurances when it passes. Best for both parties.
Hopefully that all gets figured out for those in the UK. It would really suck for those there being locked out of new games.
I live in the UK, and have no idea what you’re talking about. ELI5?
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.
Gotcha. Super concise, thanks!
Yeah that’s what I meant! Thanks for explaining to them :)
Just a friendly reminder that the judge’s son works for Microsoft.
Irrelevant. The FTC knew and had no issues so why do you?
Read the linked article for some good potential reasons it’s an issue (e.g. Microsoft has been doing a lot of layoffs recently, why is her son still employed?)
But that was written before the ruling. Now that we have it, her ties to Microsoft offer at least one potential explanation to the nonsense of the decision (IMO, obviously).
For an excellent write up on what happened, check out Matt Stoler’s recent article.
Microsoft has been doing a lot of layoffs recently, why is her son still employed?
Last article I found said they laid off less than 1% of theor staff. It would be weird if he was layed off.
Lol so the only reason he wasn’t laid off is because of his mum? What are you basing that off?
I know reading is hard bro, but give it another go.
As soon as anyone even brings that up they’ve lost any argument or debate they are in.
I don’t think the son of a FTC judge really depends on his Microsoft job to not go hungry.
As far as poison goes, I’d much rather pick Phil Spencer over Bobby Kotick.
My thinking exactly. Never though I’d see the day to be happy Microsoft is acquiring some company.
I’m very torn on this one, Microsoft becoming this big can’t be good but Activision is such a dumpster fire that there is no way this doesn’t help them get their shit together.
