Judge Grants FTC's Temporary Restraining Order Against Xbox & Activision Blizzard

I assume MS would have considered this likely even before the deal was announced

The good news about this is it does stop it all from dragging on for longer. The US decision will come quicker now which is only a good thing.

Lina Kahn has mistaken her surname for an actual Kahn. In this case she is a fragile desperate egomaniac of the bizarre shadow left, I call it that because the real left wing folks are rational and open, but the modern era version of the word is far stranger and far more corrupt. I hope MS buries her in court.

This is most certainly what MS want since the judge is sound and have good knowledge about the gamin industry.

Please. End. Soon. Thank you.

I think the FTC may have taken this action now because things are beginning to slip away from their grasp. Everyone, bar the CMA and the FTC, has given the go ahead for this deal. It is literally just the two of them standing in the way of this deal. My understanding is that there are rumblings that the CMA are about to reverse their decision. The FTC will know this, and I think this has likely forced their hand.

The FTC had hoped to drag this on until early August, thereby going beyond the date set by both ABK and Microsoft. I think that the FTC hope that the two companies cannot then come to terms again, and simply junk the merger. I cannot see that happening. For starters, too much money has already been invested in getting this deal over the line, and Xbox needs the ABK content right now, plus both companies have a point to prove, and a huge desire to see the FTC defeated (and humiliated in the process!)...

Not that I don't think this won't go through but everyone was confident about the CMA too prior to their judgement.

As things are logically I do expect the CMA to reverse their decision and the FTC case to fail.

However when politics are involved logic is not always called upon as a witness. So it's still not a dead certain, almost certain I can get behind but this is still not a 100% done deal as yet.

By the end of the month we should have a much clearer idea of the deals chances

CMA are clueless, and the FTC in America are a joke.
Just want this to end, hopefully FTC gets Steam Rolled. CMA is a tricky one, as the UK Legal system is a lot better than the US one, so CMA work around could be tricky. Saying that, the CMA in court the other day looked a complete shambles.

Just want this deal to close or go away, it's tiresome, get it done and get rid of Bobby Kotick too, horrible man!

I expect this temporary injunction to be granted, but if it isn’t, this deal will surely close by the end of the year, if not in a couple of months.

Taking Bethesda games away from other consoles will be a major definition of the argument that MS will also eventually take Activision away from the general marketplace after a while.

Personally I hope the deal falls through. Activision are scumbags and their games are forgettable. It costs far too much money that could be spent doing anything else.

I agree that the lack of knowledge demonstrated by the CMA was embarrassing, @Episode_13, but I actually think they were doing the FTC's bidding. Why the UK follow the US around like a lost puppy is often beyond me, but I think that is what happened here.

It is also the case that Colin Raftery, the Senior Director at the CMA, used to work for a law firm that is representing Sony's objections to the acquisition. I'm sure there's no possible conflict of interest here... 😒

@Fiendish-Beaver Yeah it doesn't look good, a bit suspect indeed.
I work in IT for a Legal firm and the UK Legal system is the best in the world from my little knowledge. So no idea why UK would follow the US.

Just want the whole thing sorted, it's a mess, ABK will go through, 40 countries now have said yes, seems like a no brainer. Just frustrating for fans and all, red tape and more BS.

If Sony put money into development studios instead of obstruction. Just think of who they could have purchased. Sony's hate driven culture is cancer to gaming.

@Kaloudz you say you can't wait - why? what advantage do you think it gives the consumer? I can only think of advantages it gives them in the marketplace or to the stockholders.

@iplaygamesnstuff Sorry but there's no way that Sony could ever compete on that scale. They can only manage to do what they have already been doing in buying up single developers here and there, they could never compete in an arms race to buy up as many devs/publishers as possible. Don't forget that if Xbox was an independent company it wouldn't be able to buy Bethesda or ABK either. The only reason they are managing to do it is because Microsoft are an absolute behemoth that can do deals like that and it barely causes a ripple. Very few companies have the sort of resources available to make mergers of that scale.
Also, just think about at the good that Microsoft could have done with 78bn in investing in it's current studios, new start ups, indie devs that they could take to the next level. Does that not sound far better for gaming?
It's ironic that you speak about a hate driven culture when you seem to be the one that is expressing all the hate.

@Kevw2006 New to politics and their lobbying? Seems so.

@iplaygamesnstuff New to having a mature conversation? Seems so.

@iplaygamesnstuff "Sony put money into development studios instead of obstruction". How much did Sony paid square enix to put on exclusive deals? Or rather, Sony's seems desperate of having SE for themselves.

@Kevw2006 "Microsoft are an absolute behemoth". Absolutely right, Windows OS mostly powers the entire worlds PCs.

The amount of legal experts in this field that are regulars on Pure Xbox is amazing. We are very lucky to get their insight for free.

@Cashews I don’t know about @Kaloudz but personally I can’t wait for it to be done so I can stop hearing about it.

@mousieone that's the most valid reason I've heard.

@Kaloudz Fair enough. As simple as that explanation is, it never dawned on me. cheers

@Cashews yeah I’m just done with this stuff. It’s been way way too long. Hopefully it gets settle either way this year and then we all can move on.

@Stocksy @Cashews @Kaloudz @mousieone approved or not hope we can see ABK games coming to game pass and we can all be like........... "Hehe booooiiiiii".

What is FTCs reason for not accepting the buyout? Everyone else seem to be ok with it. Other than UK.

@Cashews

you say you can't wait - why?

Regardless what anyone feels about the future of subscription programs, there is a strong case to be made that many many individuals will benefit from the addition of all ABK catalogs, past and future, being added to Game Pass under a convenient low fee. This includes the ability to stream the games without having to buy an expensive computer or console.

Personally, I have friends that work in ABK and they cant wait for Kotick to go. Even if he ends up sticking around, they still expect a huge improvement in the work place simply by having Microsoft HR taking over HR operations.

And some might argue against this, but ABK coming under XBox will strengthen Xbox enough, in some markets, to balance competition. Right now Xbox is too far behind and it would take decades for them to get close to Sony and Nintendo via "organic growth". Even other publishers have expressed that this deal would help the industry. They wont spell this out, but having Sony as dominant as it is right now makes it harder for third party publishers to get a fair deal out of Sony.

It is also very possible (although lets face its not granted) that under Xbox ownership, ABK wont feel forced to spend every cent in CoD and mobile, increasing the budget invested in developing other games. Maybe CoD will remain a yearly thing, but they still would be able to increase the budget allocated towards things like Crash, Spyro and other more varied IPs.

Plus I honestly trust MS wont ever take CoD away from competitors, and actually bring it back to future Nintendo consoles. Yes, I also do think anything not called CoD will become Xbox console exclusive, but as it stands, those games were not having much of a future under current ABK management.

@Tharsman I can agree that they'd be better off working under the MS flag than Kotick. I once worked for Microsoft. Consumers have a lot of issues with them and often - but they were a pretty damn good company to work for.

Kotick has likely always been moving towards a buyout - his entire career. He obviously wouldn't know what a controller looks like now care. He has been going for the big payday from Day one. Blizzard allowing themselves to be purchased by that group has been such a disaster.