On 27/04/2023 00:31, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
Activision's not having a good day.
The UK courts just ruled against them in the Microsoft-Activision
merger, and reports show a significant drop in players in their Call
of Duty franchise.
Looking at it the regulator (Competition and Markets Authority - CMA)
seems to have a sticking point over the problem of competitiveness in
the game streaming market* which even though Activision have gone some
way to address they haven't gone far enough for the CMA's liking. Where
it goes from here I'm not sure. I presume there is some process to
appeal to the CMA and I also presume Actibision will try to take it to
an actually court of law (the CMA isn't a court) if they can convince a
judge there's a legal basis to do so.
The other option (politics) seems to have already started with a big
cheese from MS saying that the UK isn't open for business and is being anti-competitive unlike the EU. I found the CMA's response rather
amusing as they basically said we are here to protect the interests of customers and not the financial interest of private companies. Saying
that, with are current government I can see a minister getting on the
phone to the CMA to repeat the mantra that by definition any regulation
of private companies is bad and ideas such as the rule of law are so old fashioned.
In other news, big company claims its action are nothing to do with self-interest but instead purely for customers.
*"The Merger would, therefore, bring together the company in a uniquely
strong position to offer cloud gaming services with one of the
industry’s strongest gaming catalogues. The CMA is concerned that, by leveraging ABK’s content and Microsoft’s wider ecosystem, Microsoft will have an unparalleled advantage over current and potential cloud gaming
service providers. This could result in increased concentration in cloud
gaming services or the market ‘tipping’ to Microsoft, and ultimately
deny consumers the benefits of competition between new and emerging
providers vying to succeed in cloud gaming. The CMA recognises that, if Microsoft were to significantly increase its market power in cloud
gaming services, this could have knock-on effects on independent game developers and publishers who compete against Microsoft’s own gaming portfolio, and who could be disadvantaged in a number of ways, such as
by having to pay higher fees or by being demoted on Microsoft’s gaming ecosystem."
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)