What the Microsoft-Activision Blizzard buyout could mean for labor and monopolies in the gaming industry

gamepur.com:

Microsoft recently made a startling addition to its development studio acquisitions, scooping up Activision Blizzard for almost $70 billion in the midst of the studio’s ongoing reckoning with numerous allegations of harassment and misconduct. In the wake of Microsoft’s spending spree of 2020 and 2021, in which the company snapped up numerous smaller developers in advance of the release of the Xbox Series X/S, this latest merger has many pondering what the future of the company, and the gaming industry at large, will look like.

With one major company laying claim to dozens of smaller studios and some of the most well-known IPs in gaming — including The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom, and now Warcraft and Call of Duty — the word “monopoly” is on many people’s lips, with some wondering what it means for the industry when so many disparate entities become united under one name. For the employees of Activision Blizzard specifically, the answer is likely to be: in the short term, not much.

For many of the rank-and-file developers at Activision Blizzard, it’s entirely possible that things will continue as normal. The company will still continue to make games, after all, even after it becomes part of the Microsoft family. Code will need writing, assets will need rendering, and voiced lines will need recording. However, as Ask a Game Dev points out, the higher levels of management could see some significant changes in the coming weeks and months now that they have to answer to Microsoft. As part of a larger entity, the whole relationship between the studio’s decisions and the desires of shareholders has shifted considerably. As such, Microsoft could want to take action that would