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New York (AFP) – The US competition regulator, the FTC, went to court on Thursday to try to block Microsoft’s purchase of the video game firm Activision Blizzard for $69 billion.
If the buyout of the successful “Call of Duty” publisher goes through, “the Xbox maker would gain control of major franchises, which would allow it to hurt the competition (…) by refusing or downgrading access of rivals to its popular content,” the agency said in a statement.
The FTC argues that following acquiring a smaller video game publisher, ZeniMax, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, Microsoft decided to reserve exclusivity for games like Starfield following nonetheless assuring European competition authorities that it had no interest in ceasing to do so. distribute the games on competing consoles.
Activision, which has 154 million monthly active users worldwide and produces some of the most iconic video games, “is one of the rare game developers in the world to create and publish high-quality video games for multiple devices, on particularly video game consoles, PCs, and mobile devices,” the FTC notes.
“That might change if the purchase agreement is authorized,” says the agency.
“We continue to believe that this agreement will broaden competition and create more opportunities for gamers and game developers,” a Microsoft spokesperson reacted in a message to AFP in which he emphasized that the group proposed concessions to the FTC.
“We have complete confidence in our case and welcome the opportunity to present it to the court,” he added.
At the beginning of November, the European Commission -executive arm of the EU- announced the opening of an “in-depth” investigation of the proposed purchase of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, also due to the possible effects on competition in the segment of video games.
© 2022 AFP
