It’s been more than six months since Microsoft announced its intention to acquire Activision Blizzard, a move that shocked most gamers in January (less than a year after they acquired Bethesda/ZeniMax). It’s by far the largest acquisition in the video game industry — larger than the ten subsequent acquisitions combined — of course requiring approval from many instances in various markets.
So the deal isn’t expected to be finalized until mid-2023, but at least it’s moving forward. A lot of interesting information leaked from the case through Brazil’s Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE), such as Sony’s attempt to prevent games from being released on Game Pass by paying publishers money to withhold their games from the service, and now we’re going from this Another sign of life was gained in the deal, as Saudi Arabia has now become the first market to approve Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
the country’s competition directoratesay on twitter(translated as Bing), they‘Don’t mind finishing’ the process of economic concentration between the two companies. We will of course follow this interesting case as more and more countries make decisions that will no doubt ultimately change the video game landscape.