Microsoft / Activision Deal Approval Watch |OT| (MS/ABK close)

Do you believe the deal will be approved?

  • Yes, will be approved without changes.

    Votes: 221 24.9%

  • Yes, will be approved but with structural changes to ABK.

    Votes: 102 11.5%

  • Yes, will be approved but only with behavioral concessions.

    Votes: 262 29.6%

  • No, will not be approved.

    Votes: 301 34.0%
  • Total voters
    886
  • Poll closed .
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Actually.. Mod of War Mod of War Faust Faust , sorry for tagging, but can we have a new poll up? This one is getting outdated.

Will the Microsoft/Activision Merger Agreement be extended by July 18th? Y/N answers will suffice here imo.
 
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feynoob said:
Diablo is something.
If this deal happens, MS got some series content on gamepass.
M2x6XAL.png
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"However, Rod Ferguson, SVP and GM of the Diablo brand at Blizzard Entertainment has officially confirmed that Diablo 4 won't launch on Xbox Game Pass. According to the Diablo lead, Blizzard currently has "no plans" for a Game Pass release."
 
Dick Jones said:
Probably since she can be cited as one of the reasons the deal fell through. That's a double whammy if MS contest the 3bn pay out and she already lost her payout.


Did you actually say ABK will extend for 3 months for FREE? Ah stop.
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His point is a possibility though.
They decide that:
1)They can't afford to stay stucked for more than an other 3 months on this deal past July.
2)They know they won't agree on higher breakup fees or higher dollars/share prices.

Last chance, they settle for just a 3 months extension at current prices, just enough time for CAT to make a verdict, either a legal miracle happens and CAT not only does agree with them but a legal way is found to simply persuade CMA to reverse their judgement quickly after this verdict or the deal is dead.
This is a really unlikely outcome though because normal legislation has it that even if CAT completely quashes the CMA's logic the whole thing has to go back to CMA and there's no reason they should abandon their decision without an other investigation which would obviously shift the timeframe in 2024.
Also the FTC is an other piece of the puzzle, they could end up filing an injunction at the right moment to delay things considerably even if they end up losing in court, so if we're talking about closing the deal in really strict timeframes I don't think that FTC can be completely dismissed.

So without too many words, the next big event is to understand which kind of new deal Microsoft and Activision reach by the end of July to get an idea about how serious they are about continuing their legal battle and what they actually think of their chances.
 
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Elios83 said:
His point is a possibility though.
They decide that:
1)They can't afford to stay stucked for more than an other 3 months on this deal past July.
2)They know they won't agree on higher breakup fees or higher dollars/share prices.

Last chance, they settle for just a 3 months extension at current prices, just enough time for CAT to make a verdict, either a legal miracle happens and CAT not only does agree with them but a legal way is found to simply persuade CMA to reverse their judgement quickly after this verdict or the deal is dead.
This is a really unlikely outcome though because normal legislation has it that even if CAT completely quashes the CMA's logic the whole thing has to go back to CMA and there's no reason they should abandon their decision without an other investigation which would obviously shift the timeframe in 2024.
Also the FTC is an other piece of the puzzle, they could end up filing an injunction at the right moment to delay things considerably even if they end up losing in court, so if we're talking about closing the deal in really strict timeframes I don't think that FTC can be completely dismissed.

So without too many words, the next big event is to understand which kind of new deal Microsoft and Activision reach by the end of July to get an idea about how serious they are about continuing their legal battle and what they actually think of their chances.
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I think from here on out it's gonna be a bit harder to predict things mainly because it's not just about the law and how lawyers do, things now involve the intentions of men like Kotick etc and whether they are still in for this deal or not. Kotick could stop the merger the moment his phone calendar hits July 18th, or he could be signing the renewal agreement, it's all equally likely at the moment because we're not really inside his head, and we are not necessarily privy to everything ABK investors are right now.

July will be very decisive imo.
 
Banjo64 said:
I just hate annoying people.
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It's just fascinating to me how willing large corporations are to embrace and weaponise fake news and misinformation.

When she's not posting memes or emojis, I don't think I've ever seen a tweet from her that wasn't full of either fake or disingenuous statements.
 
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Elios83 said:
While I agree that Microsoft was hoping for some miracle (helped by some political pressure and lobbying) that reversed the CMA's decision before the July 18th deadline, it was impossible to get a normal verdict from CAT in that timeframe.

Indeed I think there was some confusion in the previous posts about the July thing.
At some point it seemed like that was the date for getting the verdict.
It wasn't. It's the date the trial starts, the trial itself won't last long (2 weeks max) but then the judge will take a few months to make a verdict.

So effectively unless the trial started in June and Microsoft asked for a verdict in one month this was not possible.
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Yeah but once the trial starts, you can start getting a measure of how the judge is siding and where the board is going with regards to your arguments, which would be an important point when entering re-negotiations for a new merger agreement. Microsoft doesn't want to re-do everything, and this process doesn't appeal the decision, but rather some aspect the CMA used to reach their conclusion. What MS doesn't want is to enter re-negotiations on the Merger Agreement with 0 insight on how their appeal arguments are going, and unfortunately, it seems like thats exactly what they are going to have to do. And based on MS' comments today, they tried everything they could to go the fastest track possible to meet the July 18th deadline.
 
Astray said:
Actually.. Mod of War Mod of War Faust Faust , sorry for tagging, but can we have a new poll up? This one is getting outdated.

Will the Microsoft/Activision Merger Agreement be extended by July 18th? Y/N answers will suffice here imo.
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If we're adding - be sure to add "I don't give a rat's ass one way or the other"... so that I can finally vote.. :p

That or..

"I'm just here for the bourbon and popcorn" will do..
 
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I'd love to be a fly on the wall of MS ABK meetings when it's clear the deal is dead and the 3b is being demanded

Expect a lot of mud slinging about Lulu and Bobby's statements and a non zero chance of a lawsuit to get that penalty payout
 
SneakersSO said:
Whats honestly sad is how tough it is to decipher the MS astroturfers from the full-on cultists among them.

I didn't really think their astroturfing operations were that wide and deeply embedded into online communities until I became colleagues with some of the folks in Xbox marketing who couldn't help but brag about it.
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How do they even decipher what is actual feedback from paying customers that they might need to follow-up on vs full-on shills that just write anything they get told to?

At some point the kayfabe melds with reality and we get the now-infamous Phil Spencer interview.
 
feynoob said:
Actually, they have hit 2 miles store (same and RU approval). This new renogation will only focus on CMA and FTC.

Aside of price increases, there isn't going to be any difficulties.

The only huge hurdle is if they have a chance for CMA and whether that chance is warranted for extension.
If they have that, both will ink a new contract.
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A re-negotiation doesn't focus on simple markets. Its a re-entering of a merger agreement - theres nothing necessarily to focus on outside of pricing, specifically what the new break fee will be, and any potential increases on price per share, which ATVI may very well try to do. And you're saying price increases aren't a difficulty, but they very much are. The economy this deal was originally dealt in, and the market realities ATVI was in, are very different from the ones both entities find themselves in today. MS was already paying a hefty premium at $96 per share, and that was at a time that ATVI's market position was felt to be weakening. Now that ATVI have big money earners in the market, interest rates raising even further than anyone anticipated, and looking to pivot hard into fighting in Search & AI fields, there could very well be a messy re-negotiation, especially since both MS and ATVI will have just spent 18 months handcuffing themselves in the larger deal making world with almost nothing to show for it.
nikolino840 said:
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As others are pointing out, the ATVI lawyer bringing this up is chasing the argument Kotick insinuated in the media that somehow the FTC and the CMA are colluding to tank the deal. This is gonna be a massive backfire not just in the CAT appeal but also in the re-assessment by the CMA if it gets to that point: the concerns on Cloud SLC was being brought up in the Phase 1 findings of the CMA all the way back in September. So ATVI is non-directly accusing the CMA of being dishonest or disingenuous.
 
feynoob said:
Never ever trust 1-5% chance of winning. They always feel like 99%.
Leicester did the unthinkable of wining the premier league and the cubs winning the world series ending 108 year curse.

Unless it's 100% dead, it's not dead.
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Maybe I'm massively overestimating Microsoft's chances at this stage and the judge was just giving latitude to Beard and Co so that when they inevitably would want to appeal the whole process to the high court he's shown that he erred on their side on all procedural issues, so they wouldn't have a case against the CAT.

I also guess the market definition argument is now dead in the water - now I think about it- because if disagreeing experts always falls on the CMA,s experts opinion side, the the market definition by the state of them even disputing it shows it is well within the realms of expert margins of disagreement and so the CMA's expert definition can't be challenged by conflicting experts.


What would be absolutely amazing - following ATVI stating there was no other intervener and it was a stalling tactic by the CMA - would be if the FTC or DoJ was an intervener in the CAT appeal, or if Sony or Google were an intervener.

Given the Judge and ATVI's council seemed to interact like old friends/colleagues I suspect the ATVI counsel weren't talking rubbish for no reason - or being genuine - but merely trying to bait the CMA to give up discovery details for the hours of time spent on the Cloud SLC or to name the intervener/s they implied might appear.

To be honest, none of them came across as being good at arguing on merit versus normal gaf arguing- the judge included - and might have failed to argue Ricky down to admit poorly optimised games using VRR are just 360 gen games with normal screen tearing. But it does feel like this whole CAT appeal is going to be won or lost on applying the law rather than on the pink elephant of $2T company trying to convert one monopolistic position to another...but then again, maybe the judge's lack of knowledge on the case substance is exactly why everything goes back to the CMA on successful appeal, and the CMA restated position finally stands.
 
Astray said:
How do they even decipher what is actual feedback from paying customers that they might need to follow-up on vs full-on shills that just write anything they get told to?

At some point the kayfabe melds with reality and we get the now-infamous Phil Spencer interview.
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This exact problem has plagued the Forza Motorsport community for a very long time now.

Took part in a ton of alphas and betas (mostly for Forza) but also a few other games last gen and this was the experience:



And case in point (what I said in reference to the "feedback" bleeding edge was getting prior to release):


Even the fucking flight sim beta was a nightmare to navigate at times because some of the people that were getting involved, but due to the general maturity and intelligence levels across the flight sim community those people swiftly got put in their place.

So what's been going on since then is of no surprise to me. They need a massive rethink of that whole process, it's fundamentally broken. Grounded releasing publically on Steam early access was the best thing that could have ever happened to that game.
 
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GHG said:
This exact problem has plagued the Forza Motorsport community for a very long time now.

Took part in a ton of alphas and betas (mostly for Forza) but also a few other games last gen and this was the experience:



And case in point (what I said in reference to the "feedback" bleeding edge was getting prior to release):


Even the fucking flight sim beta was a nightmare to navigate at times because some of the people that were getting involved, but due to the general maturity and intelligence levels across the flight sim community those people swiftly got put in their place.

So what's been going on since then is of no surprise to me. They need a massive rethink of that whole process, it's fundamentally broken. Grounded releasing publically on Steam early access was the best thing that could have ever happened to that game.
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I would not be surprised if this syndrome is at least partly to blame for the Redfall fiasco. I would struggle to isolate the signal from the noise too if it was me doing it.

Literally paying in one way or another for faulty shill advice that keeps constantly in need of said paid shills.
 
Bernoulli said:
Just like the argument from the Activision lawyer that Activision will never put games on cloud
When they already have them on cloud and internal documents said so
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He's possibly not realised the mistake he's made there.

The CMA - and all of us while kicking and screaming will eventually - assert that cloud gaming will completely eclipse consoles with B2P, and him having stated that ATVI are intelligent he then can't argue they wouldn't follow that economic writing on the wall too.
 
SneakersSO said:
Yeah but once the trial starts, you can start getting a measure of how the judge is siding and where the board is going with regards to your arguments, which would be an important point when entering re-negotiations for a new merger agreement. Microsoft doesn't want to re-do everything, and this process doesn't appeal the decision, but rather some aspect the CMA used to reach their conclusion. What MS doesn't want is to enter re-negotiations on the Merger Agreement with 0 insight on how their appeal arguments are going, and unfortunately, it seems like thats exactly what they are going to have to do. And based on MS' comments today, they tried everything they could to go the fastest track possible to meet the July 18th deadline.
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Yes it seems that they really wanted to have at least the trial (not the verdict, that was impossible) done in time for the re-negotiation phase.
Maybe it's to help in the re-negotiation phase, if they perceived the CAT's judge to be against their points during all the trial they would already know their chances are close to zero. But the opposite isn't warranting anything either because this is not a normal appeal.
The signal seems to be that they're unwilling to prolong this into 2024 and they're looking at the possibility to agree on a small extension just to reverse the CMA's judgment quickly because it's either that or they drop the deal.
To make this happen they need the CAT to make a verdict in their favour quickly in first place which is far from granted and then they need a legal miracle in not having the CMA going through it again for many months (and with the same divestement/block result).

We'll see what happens in July, it will be really interesting for the fate of this deal.
 
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adamsapple said:
www.industryleadersmagazine.com

7 influential Women in the Gaming Industry

Game changers and game makers – these seven influential women in the gaming industry are the creative minds behind some of the world’s most famous games.
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Article needs to be updated with a new #1.
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I knew your standards were low. Which is fine. Makes it easier for me to get into your pants. But this also makes me feel ashamed. Please do better. For me?
 
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