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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adamsapple said:
I don't have enough knowledge on it to comment, but does being an investment fund exclude or lessen the regulatory burden ?
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Not entirely, but it avoids a lot of the associated scrutiny because in that instance Activision would continue to operate in complete independence (with autonomy), only with new wealthy owners. There's also no obvious conflict of interest, all they care about is that their investments and acquisitions make them money to further diversify away from their reliance on oil money.

It would make the blue hairs melt down due to it being the middle east but other than a bit of noise in the western press it would go through relatively quickly for a deal of that size.
 
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Topher said:
In semi-related news......

Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock


Lets Go Reaction GIF by Bounce


but it will never pass
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it's sad how we all know they would never do that lol
 
havoc00 said:
Bobby says he hopes it can close within 45 days
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He didnt sound as convincing as I would have expected though. It was interesting hearing him mention some of the UK's gaming heritage i.e Sinclair and BBC micro.
 
Timberwolf25 said:
The PI was to prevent the deal from closing. So doing nothing would've been a close for MS/ABK.

The PI, while a long shot, but at least gave them a chance. I've always thought the FTC was going to have a weak case anyway. I didn't expect them to be that incompetent though.
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Just about everyone thought it was a weak case. And that was way before all the FTC daily court coverage happened when it solidified winning. And most people aren't even legal experts.

The only people who kept strong at being against the deal had a main story that MS getting COD will break the backs of the gaming industry as MS would unjustly hoard COD and kill the industry.

As for FTC, they simply had no idea what they were doing and wasted everyone's time. Didn't the judge scold them about that too?

It's like a boss giving a bunch of people 1.5 years to do a project and for them to prove 18 months later they got good results. The day comes the boss says Ok what do you got? And the the team has nothing good to show for it. The boss asks then why did you keep asking for more time and put up a big stink about wanting the whole project to begin with and they got no real answer except can you give us more time so we can think of it some more?

Boss said times up. Fuck off.

There's only so much incompetency and BS any boss will put up with.
 
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GHG said:
I'd be interested in hearing why you think the bold would be the same consindering the fact that the PIF is nothing more than an investment fund.
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Ehhh.. have you noticed the hubbub about the Liv Golf/PGA thing?

We haven't seen the end of that, and beyond just the anti-trust concerns the fact it's the Saudi's is making a lot of noise.

You are vastly underestimating what would happen if the PIF bought a $70 billion American company.
 
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King Dazzar said:
He didnt sound as convincing as I would have expected though. It was interesting hearing him mention some of the UK's gaming heritage i.e Sinclair and BBC micro.
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He gave the UK Props too, I wonder if hes trying to sound as conservative as possible now that the deal is so close and doesnt want to rock the boat who knows.
 
DrFigs said:
I guess I'm lost as to why the CMA would change its mind like this. Is their work really that shoddy that they can't stand by their own decisions? Blocking it over cloud was weird.. but it was THEIR decision. So it's confusing about the competency of regulators imo.
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Beats me but I would hazard a guess and say MS threatened to screw over consumers in the UK somehow by cutting off MGS or Cloud and actually close legally by saying they aren't in those markets, the CMA applied for a delay to CAT in the consumers interest to find a better working remedy or argument to block and the delay was denied by CAT. CMA and MS decided to go back to the table. It's the only logical thing I can think of.

Punished Miku said:
CMA had to be a good faith actor that was willing to discuss remedies though, and now they are.
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The CMA have always been a good faith actor. MS didn't want the structural remedies that the CMA put forward so they coerced them as best they could.

So if what you say is true and it seems logical they threatened UK consumers by pulling their MGS and cloud from there to compete on console sales only since the CMA had dropped its console SLC, and since ABK had no cloud or MGS presence it was difficult to suggest harm even though everybody knows there is vertical foreclosure with the merger. Why anybody would cheerlead this anti consumer threat though and suggest the CMA are somehow enemies that aren't for consumers is the real question. Those idiotic bootlickers or shills.
 
DeepEnigma said:
As were they. No hardware RT, 9.2, TF count mental gymnastics, etc., etc..
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Yeah I guess, they never seem to give Sony the benefit of doubt in the same way they do Xbox but at least they weren't posting blatant FUD tweets going
"look at this graphical glitch in AC Valhalla, I've seen this in overclocked graphics cards before hmmm"

It's all so funny looking back specifically at the whole "overclocked" narrative nowadays. There was a lot of that stuff.
 
IntentionalPun said:
Ehhh.. have you noticed the hubbub about the Liv Golf/PGA thing?

We haven't seen the end of that, and beyond just the anti-trust concerns the fact it's the Saudi's is making a lot of noise.
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And what do you think that centers around? I made reference to that in my post.
 
Three said:
Why anybody would cheerlead this anti consumer threat though and suggest the CMA are somehow enemies that aren't for consumers is the real question. Those idiotic bootlickers or shills.
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Who gives a shit what people cheerlead for? I'm discussing what is happening and why I think it's happening. Feel free to carry on with your moral posturing.
 
Punished Miku said:
Who gives a shit what people cheerlead for? I'm discussing what is happening and why I think it's happening. Feel free to carry on with your moral posturing.
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The problem is that you're not discussing what is happening (or what has happened). As it stands the CMA have not lifted their block and they attempted to negotiate remedies/divestment with Microsoft on multiple occasions but Microsoft refused because they never truly believed the deal would get blocked.

So to suggest they are acting out of bad faith when we have hard evidence to the contrary doesn't make sense.
 
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I'm going to wake up one day with 20+ notifications that all begin with "user mentioned you in a post"

All I'm going to think of is I'm going to be drinking cum

You're literally giving me gaf ptsd
 
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GHG said:
And what do you think that centers around? I made reference to that in my post.
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You claimed the hypothetical PIF buying ATVI deal would go through quickly, and yet a much smaller deal is getting DOJ investigated because the Saudi's are involved (alongside an anti-trust investigationm, but yes that is because of Liv->PGA.)

You are grossly underestimating how controversial it would be for the PIF to actually buy a major US company. They hold interests in tons of companies but buying one outright would invite a ton of scrutiny.
 
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King Dazzar said:
I dont know. There's still value there for me. But its not a great look when added to some of Linneman's takes. More and more of late I'm just wondering if I've been incredibly naïve to a lot of the industry media shenanigans....
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Sometimes you just give people the benefit of the doubt. But if you pay attention, then it the signs just pile up.

People who watch DF and want to ignore these things are also ignoring just how dumb these three guys are every time it's time to talk about stuff that isn't basic. In this video for example, John says that when Phil Spencer said "We lost the worst generation to lose because it's when people started building digital libraries" it ignores the WiiU to Switch transition and how Nintendo went from failure to success. I mean, just how clueless you have to be to make this comparison? Just foregoing all relevant context and going for a dumb conclusion.
 
aliadiere25 said:
He wants his games everywhere, yet he was adamant about future Bethesda games being Game Pass only. And the only reason why he's doing a COD deal with PlayStation is because of the big money it'll bring in.

You can't trust a word this guy says.
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So he's not upfront or honest to PlayStation fans? Oh well
 
Punished Miku said:
Who gives a shit what people cheerlead for? I'm discussing what is happening and why I think it's happening. Feel free to carry on with your moral posturing.
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So out of all that you only got moral posturing?

I was saying that the CMA offered remedies. None of which MS accepted. That the CMA would have only acted this way now if, as you suggested, the consumer interest was under threat. That that threat was likely on the MGS and cloud front and that probably drew them back to the table. The fact that I mentioned the corporate bootlickers who attack the CMA at the end was just commentary on people doing that but I'm glad it triggered you enough to call it 'moral posturing'.
 
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IntentionalPun said:
You claimed the hypothetical PIF buying ATVI deal would go through quickly, and yet a much smaller deal is getting DOJ investigated because the Saudi's are involved (alongside an anti-trust investigationm, but yes that is because of Liv->PGA.)

You are grossly underestimating how controversial it would be for the PIF to actually buy a major US company. They hold interests in tons of companies but buying one outright would invite a ton of scrutiny.
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You're using a nationwide sports acquisition as an example which I think is misguided considering the fact that for most countries, national sport is considered of significant cultural importance so tends to get disproportionate amounts of protection on those grounds. It was a similar issue in the UK when a European super league was being proposed for football and that didn't even have any middle eastern or Chinese involvement, in fact that was going to be funded by an American company. There are similar issues with the PGA in the sense that it would usurp the current tournament format. But hey ho, sound familiar? :

"This is exciting day to unify and grow the game of golf," Nexstar said in the statement. "We look forward to broadcasting seven more exciting tournaments this year featuring the world's best golfers."

Who wouldn't want to bring more golf to more people?

But jokes aside, my thinking is because it's a videogames company it gets through relatively unscathed if it were on the table.

As judge Corley said, "all this over a videogame". At the very least I'd expect the stance to be somewhat consistent, even moreso in the complete absense of any anti-trust issues. It's going to happen sooner or later anyway considering the fact that they are gradually amassing shares in a number of publicly listed videogames companies.
 
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