European Commission approves Microsoft-Activision Blizzard deal
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The European Commission announced today that it had approved Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision-Blizzard. While it expressed reservations about the deal, it said Microsoft’s efforts to prove it wouldn’t monopolize the cloud gaming space swayed its decision. It also said that the deal would represent a marked improvement for cloud gaming compared with its current situation, though Microsoft will have to adhere to certain conditions.
The EU Commission says it investigated the acquisition, and found that, while Microsoft likely couldn’t harm rival consoles with the merger, it could potentially muscle out fellow cloud-gaming services and would dominate the PC market. It also noted that it didn’t believe withholding Call of Duty from PlayStation would harm competition in the region, as “it is less popular in the EEA than in other regions of the world, and is less popular in the EEA within its genre compared to other markets.”
The remedies Microsoft offered that the Commission accepted were a free license for EEA consumers to stream Activision games they owned to any cloud gaming service and a corresponding license for cloud providers to allow those consumers to stream their games. The Commission says these measures ensure gamers who purchase Activision-Blizzard-King games “have the right to stream those games with any cloud game streaming service of their choice and play them on any device using any operating system.”
According to the Commission, these measures will help boost innovation and development in the cloud space, and it received positive feedback from other providers. It would also eliminate the anti-competition
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