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Microsoft Businesses Games

Microsoft Justifies Activision Blizzard's $69 Billion Acquisition By Telling Regulator Call of Duty Publisher Doesn't Release 'Unique' Games (80.lv) 91

Microsoft has recently tried to justify its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard by telling regulators that the deal with the Call of Duty publisher will not negatively impact the market and other platforms because it does not release "unique" or "must have" games. From a report: In a document presented to the New Zealand Business Acquisitions and Authorisations Commerce Commission, Microsoft claimed that no Activision Blizzard game has "unique" characteristics, so its rivals would do well without Activision Blizzard titles and would be able to compete in the gaming market. "With respect to Activision Blizzard video games, there is nothing unique about the video games developed and published by Activision Blizzard that is a "must have" for rival PC and console video game distributors that could give rise to a foreclosure concern," the company said.
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Microsoft Justifies Activision Blizzard's $69 Billion Acquisition By Telling Regulator Call of Duty Publisher Doesn't Release 'U

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  • Should be denied on that alone.
    • That reasoning rarely holds in a court of law.

      Heck that reasoning rarely works in Elementary school.

      • Judges are humans and when it's clear which side is the asshole, they very much tend to rule against the asshole. They just need the attorney to help them find a legal justification for doing so.

        Particularly, one party appoints judges that believe their job is to just make up the law as they go along, rather than following the written law, passed by the actual lawmakers. For example, suppose the law says "no unreasonable searches". A lot of judges will "decide" that "no unreasonable searches" means "states

      • Curious. I wonder if the family of the innocent guy killed by swat after two fucktards got into a call of duty pissing match can sue Microsoft. They let the sandyhook parents sue Ruger over the actions of a mentally unstable retard who, not only did not pay ruger, but paid no one as he stole it from mom after killing her. MS has deep pockets. What comes around goes around when you engage in blaming the manufacturers for others actions.
  • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday August 04, 2022 @09:18AM (#62761884) Homepage Journal

    CoD MMXXII or whatever is hardly unique.

    OTOH, if they don't make anything important, why do they want to buy them?

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Thursday August 04, 2022 @09:21AM (#62761886) Homepage Journal

      Are there any COD knock-offs that are successful? I don't keep track but last time I looked it seemed that COD had saturated the market for that kind of dreck.

      So arguably becoming an XBOX exclusive would create space for another franchise on Playstation.

      • That's a good point, there used to be a bit of a rivalry between Call of Duty and the Medal of Honor series in terms of military shooters. MoH kinda fell off the earth though.

        The only other big military shooter series is Battlefield and even though they share themes they traditionally have had distinct multiplayer differences, with CoD being much more twitch style maps with a circular, recursive, close quarters map design whereas Battlefield was big open maps with lots of players tackling different roles.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I used to play MoH online. I thought CoD was the same people, but it appears not.

        • Is theming enough to stand out though with all the other shooters out there?

          WWII is a genre all its own for multiple reasons. One of them is that there's a big cultural investment for pretty much everyone. Another is that the equipment is interesting. That was a time of rapid development when a lot of advancement occurred and a lot of different things were tried, and where neither side had an overwhelming advantage despite having significantly different equipment and strategy.

          • Having a semi-automatic battle rifle and extremely rapid, precise, coordinated artillery on call even at lower levels were both astronomical advantages.

      • Are there any COD knock-offs that are successful?

        Successful? Probably not. Offering better gameplay? Arguably [thegamer.com] in some cases, clearly not in others. CoD wasn't the first WWII FPS either, there were several Medal of Honor games before the first CoD, and ISTR those being pretty successful in their day (mostly the first one, though.) Battlefield 1942 also predates CoD slightly, and was reasonably successful. There's no question whether CoD now dominates this segment, though.

        ...Slashdot screwed the pooch when I posted this comment, and said something about the

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I used to play MoH, it was a lot of fun online. There was another online only one called Joint Operations that wasn't bad, but eventually was ruined by some bugs they never fixed to prevent invisible snipers.

        • Everybody forgets Day of Defeat

          • I don't. Awesome game, played it for years. CoD doesn't hold a candle to DoD. Although I must admit I haven't been on for a year or two since I started playing Hell Let Loose (not that they are similar other than the superficial 1st person view and WW2 theme - I've just not played much else since I got into HLL and Rocket League).

      • by Kisai ( 213879 )

        Nobody plays Call of Shooty because it's Activision or because it's a Shooty game. It's not like CoD could go extinct and the players would be protesting the shutdown. There are other shooty games (eg Apex, Valorant, Overwatch, Fortnite, PUBG, Back4Blood) are all shooty games. I'm hard pressed to even figured out why anyone would want to play COD over Fortnite. A battle Royale is more fun and less sweaty than the capture-the-flag and zombie-shooter games.

        If I were to offer a suggestion at all here, Microso

    • Actilizard owns the Diablo series, Warcraft, Starcraft, and World of Warcraft. These are genre-defining games that inspired an endless barrage of copycat games on the market.

      Each one was groundbreaking when introduced. So, I find it hard to say that the uniqueness isn't here. I mean, maybe you can say the uniqueness is gone now that the market is full of copycat titles. And maybe you can rightly point out that all the creative talent that actually created these titles has long since abandoned the comp

      • Actilizard owns the Diablo series, Warcraft, Starcraft, and World of Warcraft. These are genre-defining games that inspired an endless barrage of copycat games on the market.

        Literally all of those games are themselves warmed-over versions of prior titles. I'm not saying they didn't make improvements, only that every one of those games would have failed the uniqueness test even at the time they were released. WoW is the fourth majorly successful MMO, for example, while the first fully-fledged RTS as we know it was Dune II, though Warcraft was the second. Top-down dungeon crawler RPGs date to the late eighties, or earlier depending on who you ask. Blizzard is like an Apple of gam

        • But currently is there a single top tier company that truely made something genre-defining? For example, company that made Dune II no longer exists. Dungeon crawler RPGs from eighties weren't even made by companies but rather by some individuals with access to compute time on mainframes. So that whole train of thought is a red herring. Unless you want to prove that all game companies could/should be merged with Microsoft.
          • But currently is there a single top tier company that truely made something genre-defining?

            Not really, everyone's been acquired by someone. So what?

            So that whole train of thought is a red herring. Unless you want to prove that all game companies could/should be merged with Microsoft.

            Nope. What I'm proving is that the whole argument is irrelevant. That's simply not the basis by which the merger should be judged at all. The only thing that should matter is impact on the market, because everything else is tied to that.

            • Well, I think there's bigger issues here.

              Take a look at Microsoft's track record with acquiring gaming and game studios. Let alone their general acquisition record in general corporate life.

              We don't have an economic system which fosters keeping companies as on-going running concerns. We have an economic system which fosters the consolidation of companies through buyouts that make a certain segment of the population rich. And that segment ain't you.

              So does it help the consumer? Define "help"?

              What it does do

              • The only thing that should matter is impact on the market, because everything else is tied to that.

                Well, I think there's bigger issues here.

                Well, there aren't. The goal of antitrust law is to prevent corporations from having too much control over the market. The single best way to do that is just to prevent them from getting too big in the first place. Any arguments about how much influence they should have which aren't based on market position are irrelevant. The only kind of influence that matters is how many dollars are spent where, because money is power.

                Take a look at Microsoft's track record with acquiring gaming and game studios. Let alone their general acquisition record in general corporate life.

                It literally does not matter what someone's record is, they should never be allowed to

                • IMO it's more important to consider "pressure to innovate" rather than "market power/control". Money are an abstraction, exact numbers don't matter, most important part is movement of goods and services. Competition is important because it creates pressure to innovate so innovating competitors wouldn't make you bankrupt. Any situation where anyone is able to corner the market without innovating is an anti-trust concern. So the question is do different kinds of games create pressure to innovate on each other
                  • by dcw3 ( 649211 )

                    "Money are an abstraction, exact numbers don't matter,..."

                    The Kool-Aid is strong with this one.

        • To be fair I will give them credit for Diablo as it was something new to take a dungeon crawler and make ii real-time with the point and click style.

          Of course it wasn't actually Blizzard in this case but Condor who was purchased before release and become Blizzard North.

          There is a very interesting GDC talk from David Brevik [youtube.com] who was the primary designer for Diablo and the "eureka" moment he had that changed the game from a turn-based XCom style thing into the point and click ARPG we know today. (22:40 for th

          • Making it point and click was new, because nobody had yet made an action RPG for a system whose primary interface was the mouse. But prior games like Hydlide established the genre. Diablo brought an RTS-like interface appropriate to the PC, but otherwise broke little to no ground. It was a hit because it was polished (notably, it was easy to begin playing, with just about the right amount of depth) and pretty. I played the shit out of it, so I don't want to impugn it as a game or anything — it was wel

            • And:
              1) it was Mac and PC
              2) it was WAN multiplayer, so you could make teams, play with your GF etc.
              - I think pvp and pve, not sure about pvp
              3) later you could play in "open battle net", and meet people from all over the world

    • by jythie ( 914043 )
      Well, there is a difference between 'important' and 'unique', though since we are talking entertainment products I am not sure either of them really apply in a way that regulators would care about.
    • 20 years of Marvel Movies.
      Reboots, Sequels, Prequels of old franchises like Doctor Who, Star Trek, Star Wars.
      New movies being made in the Harry Potter Universes.
      How long has Jame Bond been a thing?

      "OTOH, if they don't make anything important, why do they want to buy them?" The answer is Money. People like buying things that is comfortable and relatable. And reminds them of fond memories of their Childhood, before they had to deal with bills, family obligations and a job and the news was an old pers

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      OTOH, if they don't make anything important, why do they want to buy them?

      Back catalog and future titles.

      Activision might not make anything unique or interesting now, because Kotick basically demanded it make a lot of money or it doesn't get funded. So if you have a unique game idea, but it won't do CoD levels of money, it won't be released.

      Plus, Activision has been around since the 2600 - they were the first Atari engineers fed up with Atari's policies and spun off their own company to make games without t

  • I have to agree (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Thursday August 04, 2022 @09:25AM (#62761900)

    Call of Battlefield is hardly unique or a must-have.

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday August 04, 2022 @09:32AM (#62761906)
    Railroad companies tend to make a unique product. Neither did AT&t. The question was how much market share do they have and what was the potential to abuse it.

    I'm going to keep saying this, but we need to stop voting pro corporate anti-consumer people into office. We need to stop picking political candidates based on who has the best advertisements and the most fun rallies. Political campaigns shouldn't be reality television.
    • Unfortunately, the pro-corporate crowd thinks that anything pro-corporate is inherently pro-consumer because corporations provide things consumers buy, and if corporations didn't provide what consumers wanted, they would go out of business. "Whats good for GM is good for America."

      • And yet GM nearly went broke more than once because it failed to provide what customers wanted. They didn't have as complete a monopoly as they thought.

        Microsoft did a much better job of creating a monopoly. Neither Linux nor Apple have managed to really damage it.

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      It's a video game company. What anti-trust? No one needs video games. No one can capture the video game market. Nothing stops anyone from buying or developing a different video game with the same theme. I am not scared that Microsoft will have a monopoly on ww2 mmo pvp shooters. And if they somehow pull off that trick, so what? My tax dollars and limited anti-trust dollars are better spent in places where it matters, such as Google and Facebook and Amazon effectively owning their respective markets t

      • by jm007 ( 746228 )

        exactly! gov't has its place, but this aint it

        strange how most of the comments reflect some sort of direction gov't intervention should go... but not that many question if gov't should even be a part of this to begin with

      • ...Uh... you're... clearly not very well informed? Just 10 companies hold something like 70% of the worldwide market for game development. And that number has been steadily increasing for the last decade as big publishers buy out small studios. It's also no longer really possible to compete with the big boys, without MAJOR financial backing. Sure, you can make small indie games with a small team. But those don't hold significant market share. And big games now require massive budgets, ones the match to exce
        • To be fair, for virtually every game ActiBlizz publishes, there _are_ competitors already, even highly successful ones. What ActiBlizz has is brand recognition for its major titles and a diehard fanbase of normies who will buy whatever they shovel out.

          For its money, Microsoft bought names like Diablo, Warcraft (and WoW), Starcraft, Call of Duty, Tony Hawk Pro Skater, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, etc. All games with multi-decade legacies and huge brand recognition, but also all games with lots of competition in

        • 10 companies hold 70% of the gaming market? That sounds a lot better than most industries (thinking phones, office programs, etc).

          How many companies do you think there should be?

      • Video games have been around for 50 years now.
        I don't think it is going away.
      • The video games I play are 10 to 20 years old, but alas, who am I ...
        (World of Warcraft, Eve Online)

    • Railroad companies tend to make a unique product. Neither did AT&t.

      What? That's bonkers even if you put the "don't" that you apparently dropped into that sentence. Railroad companies do make a unique product — rails between specific destinations, for example. That's why we developed laws around freight agreements. AT&T also had a unique product, phone lines to places you wanted to talk to. And phones you were allowed to connect to their network as well. What you said is obviously wrong.

      • just because it goes between 2 destinations. You could just as easily make a competing line. And we often do (or we used to anyway, not much mass transit left, JIT means everyone wants to use trucks).

        You're misunderstanding what "unique" here means. It means something nobody else could make. Nobody else can make Fortnite. Nobody else can make Final Fantasy. Yes, you can make something "like" those, but you're only in the same ballpark. You're comparing apples and oranges at that point. Both are food, b
        • You're misunderstanding what "unique" here means. It means something nobody else could make.

          If there is already a rail line between two cities, good luck getting government permission to implement another one.

          It's always kind of odd to see people cheerleading corporations like this on /.

          I am not cheerleading for corporations, and I'm not sure what exactly is wrong with you that you could think I am doing so.

        • A railroad *is* unique if it connects to the siding for my business. If the railroad I am connected to stops serving me, I essentially don't have a siding.

        • Bullshit it's apples and oranges. Your telling me the League of Legends can't possibly exist because of DotA? is PubG not a thing? I remember when 2K sports launched and completely disrupted EA's sports games which was though to be impossible at the time.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • This is more like trains than railroads though, The only question mark is around things like battlenet where there is a network effect that could be leveraged. If this was Microsoft going after Unity or similar then there would be a strong case Generic shooter A being a platform exclusive is hardly grounds for anti-trust. The fact they control DirectX is a big enough issue without worrying about game developers.
  • I wonder this is a tact the regulators could make in saying "you can buy Act/Blizz but you have to cross publish for X years" as that kinda clears up the primary consumer level anti-competitiveness.

    It'll be interesting to see how this shakes out since MS owns both a hardware and service platform but also so many studios. I imagine if they were platform agnostic and more of just an EA/Ubisoft company there would be less friction. It's the difference between Disney buying Fox and Comcast buying NBC. Disne

    • I wonder this is a tact the regulators could make in saying "you can buy Act/Blizz but you have to cross publish for X years" as that kinda clears up the primary consumer level anti-competitiveness.

      That doesn't really work either. Microsoft controls the gaming PC (Valve has improved this situation considerably, but it's still broadly true — especially for AAA titles, which often have DRM and/or goofy launchers which break under Wine) and their rival Sony controls the other major console platform with enough power to run AAA games. Letting them distribute on PC doesn't really improve anything, but forcing them to release on Sony's platform gives Sony excessive power over them as they could make t

      • This is probably the correct route I agree, it's a matter of which regulator is finally going to draw a line in the sand about it? Microsoft could make the valid claim that precedent says they should be allowed to purchase Activision when they have clearly allowed so many other large acquisitions with more consumer impact problems than this one.

        I'm certainly not saying that is correct or good that it has become that way but someone at the FTC or some other country here has to be bold and say "no more mega-m

    • Just curious... how do you define cross publish? Do you mean playstaion/xbox? Do you include ninendo and, if so, does that mean they have to make sure it works for lesser powered consoles?

      Do you include PC? And if so, all OSs or just windows?

      My point is that the console market, itself, is already a locked down, anti-competitive market. Forcing Microsoft to pretend it's not doesn't seem to solve much.

      But I don't game much, just curious on your thoughts.

      • I mainly mean Xbox/Playstation and should probably put Nintendo in there as well.

        PC is already an open platform so publishers can choose to publish there if they want to but I would also like to see that play into things also.

        I just think the very first "anti-consumer" thought people and regulators will have for this merger is MS taking all those titles and saying "these are only on XBox now, sorry PS5 people" so maybe some assurance that they will continue the hardware agnostic publishing that Act/Bliz alr

        • The "exclusives war" does make less sense from a technolgical standpoint on the new consoles.

          That said, I think of all the exclsuive content on Amazon, Netflix, etc.

          • Yeah porting games across platforms is no longer the arduous task it used to be.

            The streaming content is a good point but at least with streaming video I don't have to purchase a $500 machine to watch it. Even if I have to have a separate subscription they all work on my TV, my phone, my PC, Roku, fire stick, etc

            Surprisingly MS is the most consumer friendly here with XBox game pass giving you games on console or PC.

            I might even be a little more amicable to that type of arrangement with the cloud gaming syst

            • I agree with the cloud gaming. With nvidia, you logged into to your own purchased copy. You didn't have to buy another one. I know that the google one is the opposite.

  • "Activision is worthless, but we're paying $69 billion." Isn't that grounds for shareholders to sue the board?

  • Quite sure that would be the case after Microsoft acquires it.

  • Furthermore, Microsoft indicated that they would allow Warcraft III: Reforged to remain the steaming pile of donkey dung that it is. They would release World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor II Electric Bugaloo. Heroes of the Storm would continue it's usual fashion of being promised a new update next quarter only for that update to be pushed out another quarter. Diablo IV release would be shelved so that Diablo Immortal could get a few additional resources as Microsoft moves in yet another useless curren

    • Microsoft indicated that they would allow Warcraft III: Reforged to remain the steaming pile of donkey dung that it is.

      I hadn't seen this yet but that is really too bad. A cleaned up WCIII should have been a slam dunk easy win.

      It makes even less sense it went so wrong when Diablo II: Resurrected is actually kind of textbook perfect in doing a modern update of a classic game.

      They are just all over the map. It's clear Blizzard needs new direction now that the old guard of the company is gone. Would like to see MS get it somewhat back to form and that means cleaning up past mistakes like W3R

    • But they would be releasing a new game, Starcraft Teaches Typing.

      Available only on the Xbox.

  • by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Thursday August 04, 2022 @09:34AM (#62761922) Homepage Journal

    It sounds like Microsoft is saying the game doesn't need copyright protection, because the reasons for copyright don't apply to this particular game, due to its lack of being a unique creative expression.

    I haven't played the game in question, but I'm looking forward to trying one of the Linux ports that will inevitably pop up after Microsoft's imminent release of the game into the Public Domain. Remember Doom? That got ported to everything right away; even ran it on my A3000.

    • That's like arguing bland, recycled pop music doesn't deserve copyright protection, which obviously it does, and it's still very successful, as formulaic as it might be on some level.

      If pop bands start consolidating, is that bad for the music market? Idk, maybe, but in the same vein as what this lawyer is getting at, it's not like buying up pop bands gives you a monopoly on good ideas or talent, the competition is fine there. There's still the matter of overall size and clout it brings, owning all the pop

  • If Microsoft doesn't deem Activision Blizzard's games as unique or must have, why offer US$69 billion for it? What does this money buy Microsoft?

    • by quall ( 1441799 )

      I'm guessing the IPs and Name because they sell.

      If a no-name company made COD under a different name, then it would perform poorly because people would see it as a generic pump and dump shooter. However, throw the name COD onto it and it's an instant hit.

  • I think MS could have made a better case by pointing out that every console has its own exclusives. Want to play Animal Crossing on a PC or a Playstation? Nope, exclusive to Nintendo. I'd like to play The Last Of Us or God of War on PC, but nope, those are Playstation exclusives, as is the Killzone franchise.

    On the flip side, nearly every entry in the Warcraft and Starcraft series had more PC exclusive releases than not - Starcraft had an N64 release, Warcraft 2 was fairly cross platform with its PSX and Sa

    • by Entrope ( 68843 )

      I'd like to play The Last Of Us or God of War on PC, but nope, those are Playstation exclusives, as is the Killzone franchise.

      God of War has been on PC for almost a year. You can buy it on Steam or the Epic Games store. Last Of Us Part 1 is coming to PC soon. The last Killzone game was released in 2013. Maybe you need some better examples?

    • The solution is simple: 3DO v2.0!

  • Starcraft is legendary, only fools would act like Blizzard wasn't essentially the Shit back in the day and today is essentially responsible for E-Sports as we know it.

    Before Starcraft we had no balance in any games or every side would be reskins and essentially identical. Starcraft showed you can have lots of cool different factions and properly balance it into a chess-like competitive landscape even though one side has $50 units with 35 health doing 5 damage and the other has $150 units with 160 health doi

    • by Holi ( 250190 )
      Starcraft 2 was released 12 years ago. Back in the day appears to have little to do with now.
      • 12 years old and many people such as myself are still playing and watching pro tournaments regularly, despite the lack of attention we've gotten from Blizzard lately. If your fans stick with a barely-supported game for this long, you know there's something good there.

        • Starcraft is a reasonably well-balanced game. It doesn't have to have broken new ground in order to be good. All it has to have been was more competently executed than other titles, which it was. Nobody is arguing these games weren't good.

          The only other Blizzard title that has had persistence like that is WoW.

          The fact people are still playing Starcraft is proof that Activeturd is a pale shadow of Blizzard.

  • I haven't touched an Activision/Blizzard game since the Blizzard Hong Kong scandal. Prior to that, I had played most of the Call of Duty games (for the campaigns) and had off-and-on played Starcraft 2 for years. It turns out that it's really easy to boycott Activision/Blizzard. I've been playing pretty much exclusively Game Pass titles for the last few years and on the shooter side, I've played TitanFall 2, Outriders, Control, Doom, and the Halo games. On the strategy side I've been enjoying Paradox gra

  • When they're right, they're right. The games aren't bad, which is why people play them. But there isn't anything special about them either. They're mundane and easy to jump into. It's the perfect game for the general masses and partly why it's so popular. Even the art style is generic.

    If a no-name company had created COD with a different name, then it would probably perform poorly due to how generic it is. It's the name that really helps push the sale, and not the content. Both the style and game-play are j

  • You won't mind not having them, then? Probably lucky we stepped in.

    Must be one of those "drunk-acquisitions" you read about.

    "Oh, man what a night. I hope I didn't spend $68b on anything that's not unique or a must-have!"

  • Now press F to pay respects

  • Aside from rabid blizzard fanboys and antimicrosoft trolls on slashdot, who with any real vested stake is opposing the merger?

    The blizzard shareholders? The blizzard board? The Microsoft board? Who?

    All this anti merger media is being generated and paid for by somebody.

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