I'm against it, but mostly since I'm against most major acquisitions as large as this, by giant corporations. Where I would draw the line would be something like Sony purchasing Bungie. That's pushing the limits as far as I'm concerned, for a single purchase anyway.
Now if MS (or Sony) were to just simply acquire 20 Bungie's over a short period of time instead, that shouldn't be a loophole that exists either. There would need to be some sort of general purchase price vs time formula as to how much they could acquire and how quickly, based on the size of the buyer or who's funding them.
The only way I could be ok with the MS AB deal, would be if MS could not buy any more gaming companies for a long enough period of time afterwards. The problem with that, is with the AB purchase, along with the others like Zenimax, etc, it should be far far easier for MS to use those resources to simply build new in house studios from if they want to grow, so they shouldn't be anywhere as needy to acquire more companies anyway.
It would be different if AB was on the verge of bankruptcy or something like that, but just because it may have a toxic culture doesn't mean a giant like MS (or Sony) should be able to purchase it based on the promise that they'll clean it up. Nothing guarantee's they will fix the problems, and even if they do, what they consider to be a problem or a serious concern, and how much get's fixed is up to them internally really.
It would also be more acceptable if AB were just split up into a bunch of smaller pieces and sold off that way. Then you'd have more equal distribution of the IP's and you'd also be more likely to see it all remain published on multiple platforms. A giant corporation like MS can easily afford to lock all those franchises down to Game Pass if they really wanted to. Where as if it's all split up, either all IP ends up exclusive, or all ends up multiplatform, and odds are they'd end up remaining shared. MS says they want to share most of it. Sony says they will be sharing Bungie games. I'd even suggest the sales be offset so someone like MS wouldn't be forced to buy only one piece necessarily, but based on a money vs time vs buyer size formula, they shouldn't be able to buy all the pieces, one after another.
While I wouldn't be considered liberal, today anyway, I'm not for the giant corporations like we have today and have had for decades at the least. Things have gotten way out of hand, and the constant acquisitions they make to just keep growing larger, especially giant acquisitions like $70 billion gaming corporation buyouts, is absurd, no matter which mega company is buying them. What ever happened to, be careful or we'll break you up like Mother Bell? Can you imagine what communications would be like today if they hadn't?
What I do find odd, is why does it seem like now all of the sudden, is the time to finally take a stand, when it comes to the buyout of a gaming company of all things? Is it just timing? Is it that gaming has become that mainstream? You just wouldn't expect now to be that time.
