Antitrust Laws Are Changing, Here's What That Means for Gaming Mergers
The wave of massive mergers in the video game industry has provoked some questions none of us ever expected to ask. Will Destiny stay on PCs now that Bungie is a Sony studio? Is World of Warcraft about to be ported to consoles? What lies ahead for Electronic Arts? Is that the next domino to fall? All of these hypotheticals are fun and fascinating, but they ignore the elephant in the room. Once Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard is complete, the company will stand as one of the three largest gaming publishers on earth. That is an earthquake in the market, and with uncertainty about how federal regulators are interpreting antitrust laws — which aim to break up corporate monopolies in the market — experts believe that the deal will earn a thorough investigation.
"The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice looks at mergers to see if there's been a substantial lessening of competition, and whether prices will rise for consumers," said Jeffrey Jacobowitz, the chair of the antitrust practice at the law firm Arnall Golden Gregory LLP. "This deal narrows the market, and the government looks at market power. So they'll scrutinize this merger carefully, I believe. They'll look for any overlaps and competition, to see whether the consumer is being harmed."
From a bird's eye view, the Microsoft-Activision deal matches the same pattern that has powered the games industry for decades. There's never been a shortage of first-party publishers absorbing other development houses into an overarching portfolio. Microsoft has been a frequent buyer over the last few years, picking up Obsidian, DoubleFine, and InXile, restocking an inventory of talent that was fallow during the Xbox One years. The company's biggest
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