Earlier this year, Microsoft announced its largest acquisition ever, the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Since it’s one of the largest acquisitions to happen in the gaming industry, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) began conducting a comprehensive investigation of a deal worth $68.7 billion.
In less than a week, CMA has gathered information of great relevance from interested third parties and shared that there are several striking concerns that need to be addressed before approving the acquisition of century.
One of the first and main concerns regarding the acquisition is the potential abuse of control via games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft that could irreparably harm their rivals. This refers to both recent and future rivals in the multiplayer universe.
On top of that, CMA is concerned that the acquisition might harm the Internet ecosystem since Microsoft had already been in control of gaming consoles, cloud platforms, and the leading PC operating system. If Microsoft also gets its hands on Blizzard, it will have a monopoly over the Internet.
Blizzard and Microsoft teams have until Sept. 8 to directly address these potentially dangerous concerns. If Blizzard and Microsoft fail to turn in a proposal elaborating on these issues, CMA will proceed with further investigating the acquisition.
In phase two, CMA aims to administer field experts that will study the outlined concerns in phase one in detail. Microsoft vice chair Brad Smith stated that they are more than willing to collaborate with CMA. Besides, he shared that their goal has only been to increase the accessibility of games across platforms.
