Former FTC Lawyer Blasts UK Agency For Blocking Microsoft-Activision Deal

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A former General Counsel of the Federal Trade Commission says that the UK's CMA should not have blocked Microsoft's merger with Activision-Blizzard.

By Steven T. Wright on

Everyone has an opinion on the blockbuster merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, but not everyone has served as a top lawyer for the Federal Trade Commission. In a recent article, former General Counsel of the FTC Alden Abbott opined that the UK's Competition and Markets Authority should not have blocked the deal from proceeding, saying that the body did not fully consider the facts.

In the piece, Abbott argues that the CMA overstated the impact of cloud gaming in the short-term, pointing out that the promising technology has yet to make significant inroads with consumers yet. «Although cloud gaming does not require the purchase of specific gaming devices, it does require substantial bandwidth, stable internet connections, and subscriptions to particular services,» he writes.

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He also agrees with a common argument advanced by advocates of the deal, which is that Microsoft is unlikely to remove Call Of Duty from PlayStation as a platform because it simply makes so much money, and the company faces competition from many other players in the space besides Sony. He concludes by stating that the decision may threaten similar «efficiencies-generating» acquisitions in the future. It's worth noting that though the CMA's initial decision has been made, the case is still ongoing, with Microsoft and Activision