The Federal Trade Commission of the United States (FTC) filed a notice of appeal with the courts, after a federal judge ruled last Tuesday that Microsoft can go ahead with the purchase of the video game giant Activision Blizzard, a transaction valued at 69,000 million dollars.

The petition filed with the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit seeks to reverse the decision of Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley of the Northern District of California Court, who found that the FTC had not shown that it is probable that the combined company will surely eliminate ‘Call of Duty’ by Sony PlayStation, or that Activision’s ownership of content will materially harm competition in the cloud gaming and subscription gaming markets.

“The District Court ruling makes it very clear that this acquisition is good for both competition and consumers“, said Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, in a statement collected by ‘CNBC’. “We are disappointed that the FTC is continuing with what has become a demonstrably weak case,” he added.

For its part, Activision defended that “the facts have not changed” and expressed confidence that the United States will remain “among the 39 countries where the merger can be closed“.

The purchase of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft has divided those responsible for Competition in the main economies, since the European Commission authorized the transaction with conditions last May, while the British CMA decided to block the merger.

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Source: CNBC

(Reference image source: Alexander Cifuentes, Unsplash)

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Activision Blizzard announced that it will carry out the shutdown of the Call of Duty: Warzone Caldera servers on September 21, as its development teams will focus on “future Call of Duty content.”

This installment of the Call of Duty saga is the rebranded version of the original Call of Duty: Warzone, the first standalone battle royale in the saga released in 2020, which was renamed Warzone Caldera following the release of Warzone 2.0 in 2022.

Now, the video game development company said that it will close its servers for Call of Duty: Warzone Caldera on September 21, so users will no longer have access to online services and the original Warzone experience.

As Activision explained through a statement on its website, this decision is due to the fact that, from now on, its developer teams “will focus on future Call of Duty content“, including the current free Warzone experience.

In this sense, the company highlighted the value of the “incredible experiences” that Warzone has offered to players of the Call of Duty franchise “since its first launch.” He also thanked the entire community and developers for making Warzone “an amazing place to play together.”

Source: dpa

(Reference image source: Activision)

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A US federal court has issued a temporary restraining order blocking Microsoft from closing the $68.7 billion Activision Blizzard purchase deal.

The setbacks in the possible acquisition of the developer by the Xbox manufacturer have occurred since the news was released, in January 2022, when Sony suggested that, if this purchase took place, its main competitor could exercise a monopoly in the video game sector.

From then on, various international organizations began to study the case to find out what the real consequences of this purchase could be and its impact on other brands, such as the Japanese one.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is the national consumer protection agency of the United States, filed a lawsuit to block this economic transaction.

This blocking lawsuit will be resolved in a trial scheduled for August 2, but it does not prevent Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, whose contract requires the acquisition to close on July 18, from closing a previous agreement.

To prevent this, this Monday, the FTC asked the US courts to block this agreement between the Xbox manufacturer and the Call Of Duty developer with a temporary restraining order.

Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, for their part, will have until June 16 to present legal arguments against the injunction, while the FTC will have until June 20 to respond.

Source: dpa

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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of the United States is preparing an order to block the purchase agreement of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard before the Administrative Court of the country.

The acquisition of the video game developer was announced in January last year, but after Sony refused, suggesting that this would lead to a monopoly, several international organizations have studied the case to find out what could happen if they finally this purchase occurs.

In December 2022, the FTC filed a lawsuit to block the developer’s purchase of titles like Call of Duty for around $61 billion. This body then argued that this purchase “would allow Microsoft to suppress competitors for its Xbox game consoles and its rapidly growing cloud gaming and subscription content business.”

The director of the FTC’s Office of Competition, Holly Vedova, also said that Microsoft had already demonstrated “that it can withhold content from its gaming rivals” and suggested that it would continue to do so if it were to buy the developer.

“We seek to prevent Microsoft from gaining control of a leading independent game studio and using it to harm competition in multiple fast-growing and dynamic gaming markets”, Vedova insisted.

Now, the FTC is asking US courts to block the Xbox maker from acquiring Activision Blizzard with a temporary restraining order (TRO), as evidenced by a document seen by The Verge.

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Source: The Verge

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Activision added to its Ricochet anti-cheat system the ability to detect third-party hardware that helps users illicitly enhance their Call of Duty gameplay, whether on PC or video console.

The development studio announced the global rollout of detection of game-altering third-party hardware in Modern Warfare II or Warzone 2.0. These are devices that act on computer and game console controllers to gain an advantage, such as reducing or eliminating recoil.

This novelty in the Ricochet system will detect offenders, who will first be shown a warning about the inappropriate use of such devices, as the study has reported on the Call of Duty blog.

Should they persist, game managers will take more stringent measures such as mitigations, actions to negatively impact the cheater experience, account or feature suspensions, or banning the offending account from all Call Duty.

Activision isn’t the only video game company taking action against third-party hardware that offers illicit advantages. Ubisoft announced in February a new system to detect players who use external devices to gain an advantage by pretending to play with a game controller when they are actually using a keyboard and mouse.

Source: dpa

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The Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) has approved Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, as it sees no indication that competition in the video game industry may be affected by this transaction.

Several organizations worldwide studied the impact that this economic movement could have for Xbox’s main competitor, PlayStation, which alleges that a monopoly could be given with the purchase.

One of them has been the Competition and Markets Authority of the United Kingdom (CMA), which a few days ago acknowledged in an update of its preliminary conclusions that it did not consider that this acquisition could substantially affect competition in relation to video games. consoles in the country.

Now it has been the JFTC that declared that, after reviewing this economic agreement between the video game developer and the American manufacturer, it has come to the conclusion “that it is unlikely to result in a substantial restriction of competition in any commercial field in particular”.

According to this organization, “there are competing businesses and games that are distributed in digital format, so it is unlikely that there will be a shortage in supply capacity,” it qualified in a document detailing the results of the review on the integration of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard.

Japan would thus be the fifth market that approves the agreement established between the Microsoft developer and Activision Blizzard, along with Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Chile and Serbia.

Source: dpa

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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of the United States filed a formal lawsuit in order to block the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, an operation valued at 69,000 million dollars, considering that it could harm competition, since the Xbox manufacturer would gain control of video game franchises like Call of Duty or World of Warcraft.

In its lawsuit to prevent the biggest purchase in Microsoft’s history, the US regulator points to the company’s history of acquiring and using valuable game content to suppress competition from rival game consoles.

In this sense, the FTC recalls that after the acquisition of ZeniMax, parent company of Bethesda Softworks, the Redmond giant decided to make several of the titles of this video game developer exclusive to Microsoft, despite the guarantees given to the European antitrust authorities.

“Microsoft has already shown that it can and will withhold content from its gaming rivals”, said Holly Vedova, director of the FTC’s Office of Competition.

“We seek to prevent Microsoft from gaining control of a leading independent game studio and using it to harm competition in multiple fast-growing and dynamic gaming markets,” she added.

The US regulator underlines that Activision is one of the few video game developers that create and publish high-quality titles for multiple devices, including video game consoles, PCs and mobile devices, with millions of monthly active users around the world.

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