Microsoft Officially Acquires Activision Blizzard, Nearly Two Years Later
Microsoft is apparently not spooked by closing the deal on the unlucky day of Friday the 13th.
By Eddie Makuch on
Microsoft has officially closed its deal to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, marking Microsoft's biggest acquisition of all time and one of the largest in the history of the business world across all sectors. The deal faced a good amount of regulatory pressure, as Microsoft faced scrutiny from government groups around the world. Key legal battles took place in the United States and the UK. Microsoft announced the deal in February 2022. The announcement of the deal closing came just hours after the UK's CMA itself signed off, and this was the final regulatory hurdle that Microsoft needed to clear to close the deal.
A key concern from the CMA centered on cloud gaming, and to help close the deal, Microsoft sold cloud-gaming rights to Ubisoft.
«All the games that are coming from Activision Blizzard in the next 15 years and those games that exist now, we have those streaming rights in perpetuity,» Ubisoft said inits own announcement pertaining to the closure of the deal today.
Microsoft is paying Activision Blizzard $95 per share for the buyout. Microsoft's previous biggest acquisition was LinkedIn, which it paid $26.2 billion to acquire in 2016. For comparison, Disney bought Lucasfilm and the Star Wars series for $4.05 billion.
As part of the buyout, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick is apparently planning to resign. Other high-ranking Activision Blizzard C-suite executives are leaving, too. Kotick will stay on through the end of 2023 and will report to Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer to help with the transition. Kotick is reported to be getting a $400 million pay package as part of his eventual exit.
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