Xbox Buying Activision Blocked: FTC Sues Microsoft

Microsoft assured a few days ago that it was “ready to fight in court” to ensure the Acquisition of Activision Blizzard and King for $68.7 billion. Eventually, you will have to. The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ha ltook the purchase to courtreports The Washington Postbeing able to prevent the Xbox company from taking over sagas as popular as call of duty, Candy Crash Y world of warcraft.

The vote to approve the lawsuit against Microsoft was settled by three votes (Democrats) to one (Republican). The FTC argues that Activision Blizzard and King offer popular video games with 154 million monthly users in all kinds of consoles, computers, phones and tablets, and that situation cross-platform could change if Microsoft takes over the properties intellectuals from Bobby Kotick’s company.

The game in the cloud and the subscriptions, among the main reasons to block the purchase

Specifically, they say that the Xbox brand will have the possibility to boycott the competition in different ways: making those exclusive games of its platforms or its services, manipulating prices outside of its ecosystem, or degrading the quality of games on other consoles. Also, an FTC employee who has spoken on condition of anonymity with the Washington Post He adds another reason: Microsoft’s cloud gaming and subscription services. The government entity says that this is a nascent video game market, and that the acquisition could curb competition in that space.

The US Trade Commission has also commented on Microsoft’s latest offerings to bring call of dutythe intellectual property that has generated the most disputes among the world competition agencies that have analyzed the situation, Nintendo and PlayStation systems. From the FTC say Microsoft has a history of buying game content and using it to crush the competition. They exemplify this with the purchase of Bethesda; xbox made exclusives Starfield Y redfallboth yet to be published, despite the fact that they told European regulatory bodies that they would not.

FTC: “we seek to prevent Microsoft from gaining control over a leading independent study”

Holly Vedova, director of the FTC’s competition office, said in a statement released by the aforementioned medium: “Microsoft has already shown that you can block and block content from his video game rivals. Today we search prevent Microsoft from gaining control over a leading independent studio and to use it to harm competition in the rapidly growing and dynamic video game markets.”