Microsoft and Activision Blizzard Might Sell Cloud Gaming Rights in the UK to a Third Party to Appease CMA

wccftech.com:

Immediately following the ruling of Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley against the FTC's request for a preliminary injunction, Microsoft and the UK regulator (the Competition and Markets Authority) announced they were pausing their ongoing litigation at the Competition Appeal Tribunal to resume talks.

The following day, CNBC reported that Microsoft could agree to a 'small divestiture' to appease the CMA, which blocked the deal two and a half months ago due to competition concerns in the cloud market.

Today, Bloomberg reports some preliminary details on what exactly that divestiture might be. According to the anonymous sources cited in the article, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard might be planning to sell their cloud gaming rights in the United Kingdom to a third-party company, such as an Internet or gaming or telecommunications or even private equity company.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether this will be satisfactory for the CMA. The UK regulator already warned a couple of days ago that talks were still at an early stage and that a restructuring of the Microsoft/Activision Blizzard deal might even lead to a brand new investigation, which could take months.

The UK is just one front where Microsoft and Activision Blizzard are battling regulators, anyway. Yesterday, the US Federal Trade Commission appealed Judge Corley's decision, asking the Ninth Circuit Court to overturn her ruling based on five main points:

Microsoft and Activision Blizzard lawyers, of course, have shared a completely opposite opinion:

The FTC’s filing fails to provide any basis to expect that it will prevail on a single issue on appeal, much less run the table on the multiple findings it would have to reverse to prevail. Specifically, as we will explain