Hours after Microsoft says it's buying Activision, the US government says it's overhauling merger guidelines

gamesradar.com:

On the heels of Microsoft's Activision purchase, the US government's Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission launched a joint review of antitrust merger guidelines. 

The DOJ and FTC monitor and may investigate mergers and acquisitions which, to put it very simply, could break antitrust laws, usually through anticompetitive or monopolistic arrangements. In a joint livestream earlier today, FTC chair Lina Khan explained that "the FTC and DOJ today are jointly launching a review of the merger guidelines" to improve the ability of antitrust agencies to assess "unlawful mergers" and enforce regulations. 

"Recent evidence indicates that many industries across the economy are becoming more concentrated and less competitive – imperiling choice and economic gains for consumers, workers, entrepreneurs, and small businesses," the FTC said on Twitter. "These problems are likely to persist or worsen due to an ongoing merger surge that has more than doubled merger filings from 2020 to 2021."

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick briefly touched on this sort of red tape in an interview with VentureBeat, affirming that Microsoft will "drive the bus, obviously, on the antitrust issues" when asked about the implications of the deal.

It's worth noting that, despite the whiplash-inducing timing, none of this is a direct response to the Activision Blizzard acquisition. The real shock is that the biggest deal in the history of the games industry was announced just hours before a sweeping review of the US guidelines governing the space where that deal would be struck. But given the FTC and DOJ's goals here – ensuring that merger guidelines reflect the "new realities" of modern and digitally complex businesses, as Khan put it – it's