The acquisition of Activision-Blizzard by Microsoft It is becoming a complicated operation for the Redmond giant. The company behind Windows has the support of the public and the institutions of Brazil, Serbia, Saudi Arabia and Chile, but the American FTC proceeded to file a lawsuit to prevent the completion of the operation, the British CMA showed serious reservations in its Phase 1 investigation and the European Union said it was reviewing the situation. Now we have found out that the European Union He would have considered moving the file to send Microsoft an antitrust warning for its agreement with Activision-Blizzard.
As reported by Reuters, Microsoft is likely to receive an antitrust warning from the European Union for its agreement to take over Activision-Blizzard in exchange for 69,000 million dollars. If this information is true, it means that the European Commission would be preparing a charge sheet that would establish its concerns regarding said agreement and that it would be sent to Microsoft in the coming weeks. The antitrust agency the European Union has set April 11, 2023 as the deadline to make a final decision.
Microsoft has already reacted to the possible move to say that it follows “working with the European Commission to address any market concerns. Our goal is to bring more games to more people, and this deal will further that goal.”. We recall that the corporation that owns Xbox expects to complete the purchase process during the first half of 2023.
Reuters reports that it is not expected that the antitrust body of the European Union is open to remedies without first submitting its charge sheet, although that does not mean that there are no informal conversations. In other words, it seems that the community body intends to warn first and then see what Microsoft proposes to approve its agreement with Activision-Blizzard.
In order to get around the objections of the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, Microsoft has committed that at least some of the main Activision-Blizzard franchises have a strong multiplatform presence.. To do this, he first offered to share Call of Duty for three years with Sony PlayStation, a proposal that was raised to ten years after the initial refusal of the company of Japanese origin. Faced with Sony’s refusal, Microsoft decided to raise the agreement with Nintendo, which has accepted. Obviously, the Big N of video games was hardly going to say that it was not seeing that Call of Duty is not a saga that has had a strong presence on its platforms.
We’ll see how events unfold, but if the FTC, CMA or the European Union say definitely no, the Microsoft-Activision-Blizzard deal stands a good chance of ending up on deaf ears.
