The European Commission has just approved the Microsoft Activision-Blizzard $68.7 billion megadeal.
The news comes after UK regulator CMA blocked the deal some weeks ago, stating that the planned merger will hurt the cloud gaming industry. Last week, we already reported that Microsoft might very well get approval from the European Union regulator this week, and today, the regulator has officially approved the deal. According to the official press release on the regulator’s website, the approval is conditional on “full” compliance with the remedies that Microsoft has been offering over the past months.
The decision from the European Commission is an interesting read, mentioning that Microsoft’s offered remedies “fully address” the concerns that the European regulator had. Not only that but in contrary to the CMA, the regular believes that the offered remedies will significantly improve the state of cloud gaming compared to the current situation on the market.
While the EU regulator first that the merger between Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard could harm the competition, its more thorough investigation indicated that this deal would not hurt rival consoles and rival multi-game subscription services. According to the European Commission, Microsoft doesn’t have the incentive to release its games on PlayStation consoles in the future, and even if it did, this wouldn’t significantly hurt the competition in the consoles market. “Even if Call of Duty is largely played on console, it is less popular in the EEA than in other regions of the world, and is less popular in the EEA within its genre compared to other markets”, the article reads. “Therefore, even without being able to offer this specific game, Sony could leverage its size, extensive games catalogue and market position to fend off any attempt to weaken its competitive position.”
An interesting decision for sure, and one that Microsoft needed after the CMA decided to block the merger. With Microsoft appealing the CMA decision, we’re now looking at the filed FTC suit to see where this deal is going, and whether it will still pass in its original state.
