2023-10-13 10:12:09
London – Microsoft has cleared the final hurdle to take over video game giant Activision Blizzard.
According to dpa, British competition authorities announced on Friday morning that they were clearing the deal.
Before the takeover is completed, however, the sale of cloud gaming rights promised by Microsoft must be completed.
Long-standing concerns about the takeover
The British antitrust watchdogs were particularly concerned that the purchase of Activision Blizzard would restrict competition in cloud gaming. The games run on servers on the Internet and are only transferred to the users’ devices.
Microsoft is already strong in the business and, as a concession, offered, among other things, to transfer some cloud gaming rights to the games company Ubisoft for 15 years.
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Microsoft and Activision Blizzard announced the deal worth around $69 billion at the beginning of 2022. With the purchase of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft wants to secure popular video games such as “Call of Duty”, “Overwatch” and “Candy Crush”.
The initial fear of competition watchdogs was that the company would then only offer the games on its Xbox console and the in-house cloud service.
In the course of the investigations, the company promised to make the games available for ten years for other consoles such as Sony’s Playstation or Nintendo’s Switch as well as cloud platforms from other providers.
Most recently, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard extended their deadline for completing the acquisition to October 18th. Microsoft President Brad Smith said, according to AFP, that the company was grateful for the thorough review and decision: “We have now cleared the final regulatory hurdle to complete this acquisition, which we believe will benefit gamers and the gaming industry worldwide “, he said.
Activision boss Bobby Kotick also welcomed the news: “We look forward to becoming part of the Xbox team.”
With the exception of the British, competition authorities in other countries had already approved the deal.
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