![]() “The market and the parties are factoring in an in-depth investigation, which is indeed on the cards.”Įxperts believe the deal is likely to eventually be approved, however, perhaps with some concessions. “What this tells us is that the deal is not straightforward and that the road to its approval could be bumpy,” said a Brussels-based competition lawyer. Moreover, Activision shares are still well below the $95-a-share offer price. Microsoft and Activision said that the transaction will be closed by the middle of next year, up to 18 months after the announcement. There are signals that the companies and the market expect the Activision deal to face lengthy regulatory reviews. Brussels concluded that no threats to competition emerged as a result of the takeover “given the combined entity's limited market position upstream and the presence of strong downstream competitors in the distribution of video games.” The planned acquisition comes just a year after the European Commission signed off on Microsoft’s buyout of video-game outfit ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion. It will bring a slew of Activision video games under the Microsoft banner, including "Call of Duty," "World of Warcraft," "Candy Crush" and "Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater." The buyout will also consolidate a huge consumer base, merging Activision’s 400 million monthly users with the 25 million subscribers to Microsoft’s Game Pass service.įor its part, Microsoft has some eye-watering forecasts for the growth of the industry, with CEO Satya Nadella saying that by 2030 the company expects 4.5 billion people to be gaming globally, a significant increase from the current estimate of 3 billion. The Activision deal is likely to bring more complaints. The EU is evaluating those complaints but hasn't opened an official investigation. Microsoft has over the past years reappeared on the radar of EU antitrust officials following complaints from communications platform Slack and German file-hosting service Nextcloud, which both argued that Microsoft was illegally pushing its own rival services, Teams and OneDrive, in Windows. “Its past bruising antitrust experiences mean that it’s now more constructive than other big tech firms when dealing with regulators,” said Zach Meyers, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform. Microsoft is different too, having altered its approach to regulators long ago. That decision sparked a years-long standoff that became the biggest antitrust fight of the time and included some hefty fines for Microsoft.Ĭompetition lawyers and experts say the Activision case would be very different, as the competitive landscape has changed dramatically. But don’t expect a clash similar to the one between Brussels and Microsoft at the turn of the century, when the EU found that the tech giant abused its dominant position. Analysts and competition experts expect the deal to undergo extensive antitrust scrutiny.
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