@shikamaru317 I know you've been playing a lot of OW2! Might be something to help you save some money.

That's interesting that a Blizzard game is already incorporated into a Microsoft rewards program.

As an American I would like to apologize for the morons we have in our government.

Oh my god........I can't believe I'm agreeing with Bobby Kotick I'm more in favor of getting rid of this guy the second the ink is dry, but hey, anything to get the deal done.

Team,

I wanted to provide a brief update on our pending merger with Microsoft. This week the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced its decision to challenge the deal. This means they will file a lawsuit to block the merger, and arguments will be heard by a judge.

This sounds alarming, so I want to reinforce my confidence that this deal will close. The allegation that this deal is anti-competitive doesn't align with the facts, and we believe we’ll win this challenge.

Thanks to the hard work by all of you every day, we’re on a strong path, bringing epic joy to players around the world with what I believe are the greatest games in the industry. At the same time, the competitive landscape is shifting, and, simply put, a combined Microsoft-ABK will be good for players, good for employees, good for competition and good for the industry. Our players want choice, and this gives them exactly that. You can read more about the specifics on those points in this update we recently shared with you.

We believe these arguments will win despite a regulatory environment focused on ideology and misconceptions about the tech industry.

Thank you for your dedication and creativity.

Bobby

Yeah, sadly the economy in Overwatch 2 is absolutely broken right now, even worse than Halo Infinite. You only get like 80 coins per week for doing all of the weekly challenges, and legendary skins cost 1900 coins, while each season pass costs 1000 coins. Hopefully Blizzard increases the weekly in-game coin earning considerably at some point. If they don't they are going to lose alot of players I suspect.

A part of me wishes it would get blocked at this point honestly. I never cared much about this deal on a personal level as I don't like many Acti-Blizz games, and they can't acquire anything else as long as the investigations and now the court case are ongoing. If the CMA came right out and blocked it full stop, even with the concessions Xbox is willing to offer, this whole ordeal will get wrapped up much faster than it would if it drags on for another year or more in the courts. The sooner this either closes or gets blocked, the sooner Xbox can pursue other, smaller and easier acquisitions, some of which I will hopefully care about alot more than Acti-Blizz.

Like I mentioned in the related article, FTC argument is not only untrue but even if it were true it still bad as FTC has no standing on whether or not MS broke rule it as made with the EC. If that's the basis of FTC argument I believe MS have a great case to ask a motion to dismiss, winning by default and preventing the case to even be ruled upon, citing that if it broke a supposed agreement with the EC the EC is more than qualified to file a suit on their own in the appropriate court of law.

Yeah, I'm 50/50, I honestly don't care what FTC says, it's all about CMA and they are definitely a concern since Phase 1 of CMA looked like they were obsessed with Sony's bottom line but we know that Phase 2 is a different team so who knows how they're leaning. If they block then it's dead because they have so little oversight (UK, Lol).

However, an FTC suit will definitely tempt other regulators to block as well, especially those who may see this as an opportunity to get a win against big tech, which I think is something that may be appealing to CMA as well, they've been flexing their muscles lately. This deal would have passed easily a few years ago but regulators are obsessed now with looking like they've took down large companies no matter if the argument makes sense.

Maybe Microsoft just needs to bribe some Tories, they're all corrupt MFs anyway.

If this gets blocked based on arguments such as those being put forth then I'm confident in saying they'll use the same arguments no matter what publisher that Microsoft tries to acquire, I know that ABK is the largest but when you put forth arguments that make absolutely no sense, it's clear that the core of your argument is simply "big companies can't acquire big companies" so I'd only expect studios below the ~1bn threshold in the future.

It was actually reported that Biden may want the deal approved.

Certainly not a good look that Dems have just spat in the face of unions twice within a month, Lol.

Speaking as a Dem/Labour supporter as well.

Only issue is it would be a severe blow to Microsoft's overall gaming ambitions.

Plus, I'm kind of looking forward to learning all the juicy industry secrets, this industry is so damn secretive and it's all about to be revealed, Lol.

Yeah, agree that MS will have to stick with WAY cheaper targets if the deal gets blocked. Probably stay away from publicly traded companies in general. Not really sure what can be had for that "cheap" of a price though.

What does this mean? The deal can still close but they're still taking it to court?