Gamers’ Lawsuit Vs Microsoft – Activision Deal Gets Amended, With Sony’s Help This Time
Sony seems to be desperate to throw any spanner into the works that is the Microsoft – Activision deal, as they have involved themselves in the gamers’ lawsuit.
Video Games Chronicle reports that the California suit has been filed with amendments, which includes new information from both Microsoft and Sony. As a legal matter, both parties complied with a discovery request for documents. Apparently, Nintendo of America was also contacted. But Nintendo did not agree to have their president Doug Bowser placed under deposition, after the initial dismissal.
The suit was originally dismissed by Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley for lack of sufficient evidence, but the same judge gave them the leeway to make refiling the suit possible. Of course, there is more to this than is on the surface.
As explained by Florian Mueller, who read the amended lawsuit, they have abandoned the labor market theory. The plaintiffs could prove that they play games, but are not employees of the game industry.
The amended lawsuit seems to be a revised version of arguments collected from the CMA’s own public disclosure of their own documents investigation the Microsoft-Activision deal. Both the terms high-end console market and multi-game content library subscription appear in their lawsuit. They do also directly cite the CMA itself.
Their main arguments are also seemingly copied from CMA documents, mainly that Activision Blizzard King is a particularly important company, and that the deal would cause vertical harm to consumers, because of the uneven competition between Sony and Microsoft.
They also argue there will be a horizontal harm to consumers, because there is also competition between Activision Blizzard King games and Microsoft’s own games, and
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