The FTC announced today that it would be seeking to block the purchase of Activision Blizzard King by Microsoft. In a series of tweets and a post on its website, the FTC lays out its reasoning for the complaint.
“Microsoft has already shown that it can and will withhold content from its gaming rivals,” said Holly Vedova, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition. “Today we seek to stop Microsoft from gaining control over a leading independent game studio and using it to harm competition in multiple dynamic and fast-growing gaming markets.”
In its statement, the FTC pointed to Microsoft’s history of “acquiring and using valuable gaming content to suppress competition from rival consoles” naming the purchase of Zenimax (Bethesda) and its making Redfall and Starfield Xbox exclusive “despite assurances it had given to European antitrust authorities that it had no incentive to withhold games from rival consoles.”
Microsoft Activision Blizzard
The announcement of the move by the FTC comes hot on the heels of Xbox Head Phil Spencer announcing Microsoft had reached 10-year agreements with Nintendo and Steam for Call of Duty.
According to the FTC;
“Microsoft’s Xbox Series S and Series X are one of only two types of high performance video game consoles. Importantly, Microsoft also offers a leading video game content subscription service called Xbox Game Pass, as well as a cutting-edge cloud-based video game streaming service, according to the complaint.
“Activision is one of only a very small number of top video game developers in the world that create and publish high-quality video games for multiple devices, including video game consoles, PCs, and mobile devices. It produces some of the most iconic and popular video game titles, including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Overwatch, and has millions of monthly active users around the world, according to the FTC’s complaint. Activision currently has a strategy of offering its games on many devices regardless of producer.“
The FTC is alleging that by owning Activision and all of its properties, Microsoft “ould have both the means and motive to harm competition by manipulating Activision’s pricing, degrading Activision’s game quality or player experience on rival consoles and gaming services, changing the terms and timing of access to Activision’s content, or withholding content from competitors entirely, resulting in harm to consumers.”
The merger continues to be looked at in the UK and Europe, but the complaint by the FTC is certainly very bad news for the future of the purchase.
