Dragon Age 2 (base game) finished, actually a pretty short 1000G this time of 27hrs. Felt great revisiting this one even if the amount of dialogue freezes increased the further I got in. What they could have done with actual time/budget for this one would have been something to see but oh well. I'll finish the DLC today and then maybe start DA3 straight away ... But that requires a full playthrough on Nightmare mode -_-

It'd be awesome if they could just keep Blizzard and King but it's very awkward.

Regulators would have to force Microsoft to sell them after the purchase which means Microsoft has to find a buyer and likely at below their actual value until they do find a buyer or Microsoft would have to renegotiate the deal and only acquire Blizzard/King from Activision which Activision would never do because they want to sell everything and make the most money possible.

They'll get more studios, anything below $1bn doesn't meet regulatory threshold, I don't think they'll get anymore publishers though.

I'll recover what I can, sometime today.

Lol. Who gives a shit, they are just trolls and never had any intention of liking Xbox.

2020 - 2021 were pretty good to great years for Xbox and backed up by their critical reception, 2022 has been pretty rough but hey, shit happens, it's just one of those years, every company has them, 2023 looks awesome and I'd say even in 2022 despite Xbox having very few releases, it still showed a focus on releasing quality products rather than rushing stuff like, things like Grounded, Pentiment and As Dusk Falls were all well received.

Suppose we shall see, CMA doesn't need FTC to block the deal but it certainly helps not being the odd one out in the entire world, America would probably put some political pressure on the CMA if they were, now it would be a lot more comfortable to block a deal against a tech giant when someone else has your back.

It'd be a black eye, it'd be a bit embarrassing but at the end of the day, Microsoft gets the $69bn back and they only have to pay $3bn breakup which is nothing to them. If Phil took the blame then Satya would have to take equal amounts of blame, Satya was just as confident as Phil in this passing and Phil doesn't just take $69bn without dozens of senior Microsoft employees checking it over and approving it, from lawyers to Satya to Smith.

As for what happens after, sure it would be a blow to their overall gaming ambitions but put it this way, Xbox without ABK is still Microsoft's largest consumer business, even before ABK, Microsoft was "all in" on gaming, even before ABK they made a $7bn publisher acquisition, all of this was way before ABK was even in the picture, before they even considered acquiring ABK, because we know that those conversations only started in late 2021.

X023 Believe.

I have willed it into existence.

CWA Statement on the FTC’s Decision to Sue to Block the Microsoft/Activision Deal

By moving to file a lawsuit in administrative court to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the Federal Trade Commission has missed an opportunity to demonstrate that it takes the labor impact of mergers seriously. Instead, the FTC has once again focused its analysis solely on consumer harms and, in this case, console-market leader Sony’s concerns about increased competition.

CWA has for years raised concerns about the effect of mergers on workers and the labor market and we have worked with economists to assess the real risk of monopsony to workers, including in this transaction. Union representation and collective bargaining agreements are the most powerful tools we have to balance power between workers and companies. Collective bargaining is a bulwark against downward pressure on wages from merged employers with increased market power. Contractual protections mean that union workers are more empowered to blow the whistle on dangerous or unethical behavior, which benefits both employees and consumers.

Activision Blizzard is using its already-significant power to resist workers' organizing efforts and clearly does not wish to respect its workers' right to freely and fairly organize a union. That's why CWA sought a remedy that would rein in these tech giants' labor market power – a labor neutrality agreement that enables workers to counteract the increased monopsony inherent in the merger through collective bargaining. After CWA brought our concerns to light, Microsoft agreed to enter into negotiations to show regulators their good faith efforts to address monopsony harms, resulting in a legally binding agreement with CWA.

Workers across the country, including in the video game industry, understand that one of the most effective ways to fight consolidated corporate power is to consolidate their own power by joining together in unions. The status quo for American corporations – particularly the tech sector – is to aggressively resist these efforts, including illegally firing workers and interfering with union elections.

Approving this merger with the labor agreement that we fashioned with Microsoft to protect collective bargaining rights would have sent a game-changing message to corporate America that workers do indeed have a seat at the table and their concerns matter and must be addressed. We believe the FTC’s case is not likely to convince a federal judge, particularly as the European Commission may move to approve the deal, and that workers at Activision Blizzard will finally have the opportunity to improve their wages, benefits and working conditions through their union.

CWA Statement on the FTC’s Decision to Sue to Block the Microsoft/Activision Deal | Communications Workers of America

How times have changed when both a union is backing a major corporation and EU may support an American company more than America, Lol. As I said before, FTC have basically spat in the face of unions after saying they would strongly consider them, a win against big tech is more important than workers rights for the FTC.

Perhaps this shouldn't be so surprising, considering that America has pretty much always hated unions. Sure, there's some posturing in their favor here and there, but at the end of the day, America is perfectly happy to tell unions to get fucked.

True that.

FTC is changing their mind on a whim, first they care about unions and when it didn't go in their favour because Microsoft went pro-union, they suddenly ignore the largest union in America and say stuff like "it doesn't matter what Microsoft tells you, companies break their promises" when CMA has the damn thing written in a contract, treating them like they're idiots and this is their first time, Lol.

I don't think FTC can ever claim to genuinely give a shit about unions again, on a pure numbers basis, ABK is larger than both XGS and Zenimax combined and FTC has just screwed hundreds if not thousands of tech employees out of the option of unionisation and better work environments, on the basis of very weak arguments.

It's one thing if this was always their agenda, if they said "we're FTC, we don't look into worker environments" that would be perfectly fine with me, I take issue more with the fact that they pretended to care and changed their actual responsibilities to considering unions/workplace environments when it suited them then ignored it when it suited them.

Some highlights and a few comments from the administrative complaint from the FTC:

- First relevant market: high-performance video game consoles, only Sony and MS are competitors there.

- The FTC differentiates between general purpose PCs and high-performance gaming PCs, although both can be used to play games.

- ABK is one of the few independent companies capable of developing "standout video games" for those consoles.

- The other two relevant markets are multi-game content library subscription services and cloud gaming.

- Total gaming revenues for MS in FY2022 were over $16 billion (Is this new?).

- "Nintendo's most recent console—the Nintendo Switch—is not a ninth-generation gaming console". The FTC put an end to the debate :s xD

- The FTC says that there are only 4 AAA independent games publishers: Activision, Electronic Arts, Take-Two, and Ubisoft (Japanese publishers are fair game, then?) 

- Epic would be one of the few other studios capable of releasing AAA games, something that industry participants refer to as the "Big 4 + Epic." (Is that true? I've never heard that).

- AAA games increase adoption and engagement, giving a console or subscription service greater leverage in attracting additional content from publishers and developers (It sounds like the video game industry is all about AAA games, nothing else).

- "Nintendo pursues a different strategy of integrating its lower performance, portable hardware with its own distinctive first-party games to appeal to player nostalgia for Nintendo's unique gaming experience over high resolution, life-like graphics, and performance speed". (Nostalgic children?)

- Although the FTC talks about high performance PCs for gaming, later they say that gaming PCs and mobile devices are not commercially reasonable alternatives to High-Performance Consoles.

- Microsoft is already the market leader of multi-game content library subscription services in the US (although we don't know exactly why or how: in fact, some tiers of PS+ are initially mentioned as comparable to Gamepass but then there is not mention of them in the section about subscription services).

- Buy-to-play games are not commercially reasonable alternatives to subscription services. Therefore, they are different markets.

- Xbox Live Gold, PlayStation Plus Essential or Apple Arcade aren't alternatives to subscription services, either.

A few hot takes:

- I’m 50-50 on the deal going through or not and the CMA will kill it or save it.

- There are so many assumptions and so little evidence in the complaint... It fits the theories of Khan these last 4-5 years, but as a lawyer I’m not used to this, I need more substance xD

- The issues are really, really similar to the ones from the CMA after Phase 1 (that’s why I think that the CMA will save or kill the merger).

- Everything is defined in such a narrow way. I mean, only 4 publishers and Epic can create AAA games? And what happens with the thousands of games developed by indies, some of them very successful?

- Nintendo sells millions of games and consoles but is considered as their own market, not a competitor in any case.

- Regarding the Zenimax acquisition, I think that the EC said that even if MS decided to make all the content exclusive, their games weren’t "good enough" to create a problem. I’ll check again the decision, but I’m not sure why there is so much focus about that (besides the statements from MS or that making something exclusive is not anticompetitive per se).

- The CMA put way more effort defining subscription services and specially cloud gaming as their own markets. Here lots of arguments feel undercooked.

In this first reading the complaint feels weak to me, but the timing is not in favor of MS. If they can get the CMA (even with concessions), I think that they will renegotiate the merger agreement. But if they don’t, I think that they will pull out of the deal before the second extension (April 18th 2023).

Tomorrow I’ll share more!

Source: Idas.

Tom Warren is getting in on the hype action now lol

Already said how restricting the market to "high performance video game consoles" to exclude Nintendo is highly stupid, Lol.

FTC 'confirms' that Switch isn't a ninth generation console! Jk. Who gives a shit? Lol. I don't see how it's relevant to the case.

They're also claiming that there are only 4 AAA independent publishers? Are they for real? First excluding Nintendo from the market, ignoring PCs and now this. They claim that only ABK, EA, Take Two and Ubisoft are the 4 - What about Embracer Group? Sega? Capcom? Square Enix? Bandai Namco? Epic Games?

They're purposely restricting the market once again by focusing on "independent" only, thus preventing us from including Tencent, NetEase and WBIE but I don't see why it matters that those companies aren't independent when they're all still competition in the market and Tencent in particular is huge competition to Microsoft.

And they aren't only counting American companies because Ubisoft wouldn't be there in that case.

Epic is one of few studios capable of releasing AAA titles? What? There's literally dozens, Lol.

Excluding PC & Mobile from the discussion because they aren't "commercially reasonable alternatives to high performance consoles" is Lol.

Not sure I understand this point "Buy to play games are not commercially reasonable alternatives to subscription services, therefore they are different markets"

Anyway, they're clearly trying to restrict the market as narrow as it can possibly get to screw over Microsoft. Next they'll say something like this competitor isn't a commercially reasonable alternative because they don't have a green logo like Xbox, Lol. If anything has came out of this, it's that regulators have a surprising huge lack of knowledge in the gaming industry or know they are talking nonsense but just want to drag it out as long as possible.

CADE still remains the best, they used actual facts, they backed their research up, an extremely thorough look into the market and they did it in a few months, they didn't make crystal ball predictions, they didn't ignore their mission statement to fit their narrative, what a difference, Lol.

"Buy-to-play games are not commercially reasonable alternatives to subscription services."

So...this deal is good for consumers then. Cus it would give gamers access to Activision games in a more commercially reasonable way. Cool.

Surprising...?