Microsoft's Acquisition of Activision Blizzard Is Good News For Smaller ABK Studios

gamerant.com:

Microsoft made big headlines when it announced that it would be acquiring Activision Blizzard for an all-cash sum of nearly $70 billion USD. This dwarfs Microsoft’s previous acquisition of ZeniMax Media ($7.5 billion), as well as Take-Two Interactive’s Zynga acquisition (~$12 billion) earlier this month.

Given the Activision Blizzard's current status in the public eye, this acquisition has naturally raised a lot of questions - many of which are sure to be cleared out in the coming months. While one cannot say for sure at this point, it seems as though smaller ABK studios will at least benefit the most from this deal.

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As industry observers already know, things haven’t been the best at Activision Blizzard of late. In addition to widespread allegations of sexual misconduct, abuse, and harassment, many of the smaller studios within the ABK conglomerate like Toys for Bob, Raven Software, High Moon Studios, Demonware, and more have succumbed to Activision’s insistence on putting out annualized releases of Call of Duty, which more-or-less guarantee commercial success year after year.

This once-promising roster of studios have been behind some fan-beloved games of the sixth and seventh generations, including X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Singularity (Raven), Prototype (Radical Entertainment), Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions (Beenox), and Skylanders (Toys for Bob). It's true that many of these games may not have performed the best on a commercial front, especially compared to other blockbuster games coming from the publisher, but these studios certainly deserve the chance to keep pursuing smaller passion projects.

Now, many of these studios have been providing support