a multicultural team of v
Member
Sorry mate, shes a bloody plonker.
Her FTC has failed at basically everything they have tried.
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FTC: U.S. antitrust enforcer says pressing on with fight against Microsoft/Activision deal
- Thread starter Daniel_Mallorca1985
- Start date
- News
Her FTC has failed at basically everything they have tried.
itsjustJEFF
Member
I agree. First Apple and MS, they are the biggest. Then soon after Alphabet.
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Bernardougf
Member
Can we just ignore this ? No one gives a fuck anymore
ReBurn
Gold Member
Waste of taxpayer money. Even if their administrative court rules in their favor, which it will because it does almost 100% of the time and when it doesn't they just overrule it anyway, they still have to go to Federal court and prove the merger breaks the law. Since they couldn't get an injunction the likelihood of them unwinding this deal is next to zero, especially with the lawyers they've been putting out there.
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Barakov
Gold Member
The FTC says that they are going ahead with the appeal and wants to assess the Ubisoft agreement:
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U.S. antitrust enforcer says pressing on with fight against Microsoft/Activision deal
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said on Friday it remained focused on its appeal opposing Xbox maker Microsoft's now-closed $69 billion deal to buy Activision but would "assess" the company's agreement with Ubisoft .www.reuters.com
Lionel Richie
Member
They can very publicly seethe and boil.
ArtHands
Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
I have way too many notifications to reply right nowxD I'll try during the weekend.
Regarding the thread, I would keep it open for at least 6 months.
The merger is done and nothing will change that, but for those interested in the process and potentially getting more info and insights from the industry, there are still some interesting topics to follow during the next months:
- The FTC appeal in front of the Ninth Circuit: oral arguments are expected to happen in December 2023.
- The FTC resuming the administrative process in January/February 2024.
- The gamer's lawsuit: February 5th 2024 is the placeholder trial date for it.
- The implementation of the different remedies: the EC commitments and the CMA undertakings, including the original cloud agreements (Ubitus, Nivida, Boosteroid and Nware) + the Ubisoft Agreement.
- The annual reports about the implementation of the corresponding remedies: we should get the first one on March 31st 2024 through the CMA.
- The execution of the Nintendo, Sony and CWA agreements.
- Any potential conflicts or issues that could arise due to all of the above.
Some of them are likely to be dropped (the FTC case or the gamers' lawsuit) but at least the first 6 months post transaction (probably more) could still be entertaining.
Nah, keep it open so we can bump this thread for a laugh once in a while
Dirk Benedict
Member
Copium for that Hopium.
StereoVsn
Member
I am very much against this deal because it means further major industry consolidation and MS using their essentially unlimited coffers to subsidize gaming side.
Also, again, fuck MS for firing so many people while having $89 billion profit in ‘22.
At the same time I feel Khan is incompetent which is unfortunate.
Also, again, fuck MS for firing so many people while having $89 billion profit in ‘22.
At the same time I feel Khan is incompetent which is unfortunate.
Kings Field
Member
PaintTinJr
Member
Well the 2years of interest on however much they end up paying the IRS in back taxes will dwarf that amount, so it is basically free to the tax payer, when the fines from the FTC potentially winning this case would bring in big money (from Microsoft) too.
As it stands, Microsoft claim the deal doesn't break the law(in the US) for ant-trust, yet has admitted aspects of the deal in other regions of the world needed them to provide remedies for Serious Lessening of Competition which in them selves are analysis of anti-trust issue, which for any educated purpose is quite a simple contradiction to see.
Their agreements with the CMA and EU are evidence that contradicts their claims in the US, whether a judge in a corrupt setup can see that or not. Either way, it is the FTC's job to make these arguments (legally), so despite them likely to lose in court, that is their undesirable position in a completely broken and stacked deck against them.
DJ12
Member
I actually agree, with the impending gamepass death to all Activision games they be one less publisher curning out needless yearly updates to rubbish games.
Goalus
Member
Unless MS buy the IRS.It's fine, it will more than pay for itself.
Microsoft faces $29B tax bill in IRS crack down
Says it has enough cash to foot the demandwww.theregister.com
Dick Jones
Gold Member
The weirdest thing about this thread are people are delighted in saying the FTC are powerless and underfunded. Perhaps the Americans in the board should be demanding additional powers and funding for its Departments so the American public don't get fucked over. Ignore the current case, look at the bigger picture here. Any American delighted that the major corporations can buy their way to do anything in America is either a dumbfuck or wants to see the US failed.
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Goalus
Member
It seems that before this deal happened a certain Japanese company could buy their way to do anything in America. Now there are still some American companies left that this Japanese company can bribe and manipulate, but it's one less. The potential damage they can do has thus been reduced.
Dick Jones
Gold Member
Read my comment. Ignore the current case. Think big picture. Your comment makes zero sense.
Where do these american corporations have infinite pool of money?
Dick Jones
Gold Member
Read my comment again. Think bigger picture. Shouldn't the people demand a robust regulator to protect its people.
Ozzy Onya A2Z
Member
That's exactly what will happen, Khan's FTC are about to hit major scrutiny due to spending, poor results, case selection, hiring practices, bipartisan issues/retention and bias. That's the short list.
Orbital2060
Member
they gotta work on something i guess
Varteras
Member
As an American, I can say that I have advocated for the FTC to be rebuilt as an independent agency granted authority by Congress. With steep requirements to remove said authority. Very similar to the CMA. The fact that an agency in the US is virtually powerless to stop anything, that an agency in the UK can globally halt in its tracks with ease, is fucking embarrassing.
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Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
They can demand divestiture. Breaking up monopolistic companies is not unprecedented!
And this is exactly what the FTC's long-term goal is. Their view is that the tech-giants are simply too big and powerful and need to be split up.
The power to block must always have a limit, legality and the legal system. If the problem is the legal system, then the issue is that we must change that legal system, and not give a single person the powers to bypass that legality accepted by citizens. Seen from a European perspective, in any case I would be concerned about the independence of judges and courts and that they were never hand-picked by governments or political parties with whom it would create a personal obligation.
Thinking that it is better to leave decisions to the free will of a person with their prejudices and political tendency (whether anti-capitalist or capitalist) is certainly not better. The chances of unfair resolutions or errors would be even greater.
That is, a regulator must be independent in its work and investigations, I agree. But its decision can never be final. His ultimate obligation should be to prove that an acquisition or practice is anticompetitive and will cause harm to the consumer and the development of a market. For that it have a budget.
Not even the CMA can avoid being alien to the legislation as demonstrated in the first meeting front the CAT and how it was called to order and one reason for its reversal decision.
If a regulator fails to prove harm to the user or to the competition of a market before the courts, it means that he has not done his job well or he is simply wrong.
That said, there are more than 40 regulators that have approved the ABK acquisition. All with their characteristics.
Thinking that it is better to leave decisions to the free will of a person with their prejudices and political tendency (whether anti-capitalist or capitalist) is certainly not better. The chances of unfair resolutions or errors would be even greater.
That is, a regulator must be independent in its work and investigations, I agree. But its decision can never be final. His ultimate obligation should be to prove that an acquisition or practice is anticompetitive and will cause harm to the consumer and the development of a market. For that it have a budget.
Not even the CMA can avoid being alien to the legislation as demonstrated in the first meeting front the CAT and how it was called to order and one reason for its reversal decision.
If a regulator fails to prove harm to the user or to the competition of a market before the courts, it means that he has not done his job well or he is simply wrong.
That said, there are more than 40 regulators that have approved the ABK acquisition. All with their characteristics.
ReBurn
Gold Member
The IRS thing is completely unrelated to the Activision deal so not sure why you would even bring that up, especially since money paid to the IRS in back taxes would not be allocated to the FTC budget. It's still Khan wasting her limited budget on a fight she can't win unless Congress gives her more power and with how ineffective Congress has been for the past few years the chances of her getting anything but criticism are pretty low.
It seems your current conspiracy theory is that US judges are corrupt for not seeing whatever you believe they should have seen with this deal. It's possible that you don't understand how the US legal system works. The FTC is hauling Microsoft to court on claims their deal breaks the law. They are the party making the claims and they are the one to have to prove them. Microsoft does not have to prove that the FTC is wrong, the burden of proof is on the FTC. The FTC weren't able to prove their claims. That's why they didn't get their injunction and couldn't stop the deal.
It doesn't matter what happened with the CMA or EU because those proceedings were under different rules in different jurisdictions. If there was something presented in other jurisdictions that was relevant it was the FTC's job to bring it up in court and prove it was relevant to US anti-trust law, so if that didn't happen then that's the FTC's fault. It will be a tough battle to try to unwind the deal on a claim that giving up cloud rights to games they own to a competing publisher significantly lessens competition. That's the thing anyone should be able to understand for whatever educated purpose you're claiming.
Little Chicken
Member
I guess they didn't embarrass themselves enough the first time around.
ManaByte
Banned
Except everyone using that word doesn't understand what it means and are just using it as ammo in console wars. It's the exact same thing people did when Disney was buying Fox and screaming that it'd be a monopoly and the DOJ would block it. The DOJ had Disney divest the Fox Sports regional sports channels (Prime Ticket, now called Bally Sports) because they also owned ESPN and with that they'd have a monopoly over live sports broadcasting. Had Disney bought a distribution method, such as a movie theater chain or retailer, they'd then be the monopoly that people were claiming they would be with movies.
![L*][*N*K](/data/avatars/m/842/842515.jpg?1696510303){kind=avatar}
The US's own damn officials are lobbying against their regulatory body lol, how the hell are regulators supposed to keep megacorps under check when they can just pay off the judges and government officials.
This is pointless though the deal is done and unfortunately, lisa should understand by now that her body is intended for posturing and nothing more, fighting this any longer would only lead to embarrassment sadly.
One thing I don't get is why the hell are people here so against the FTC? It's like the majority of posters here support Microsoft and apparently lisa is the bad guy for trying to rein in these corps from a lopsided position...jesus man these mega corporations arent our friends and we should be supporting regulators not acting as cheerleaders for corpos.
This is pointless though the deal is done and unfortunately, lisa should understand by now that her body is intended for posturing and nothing more, fighting this any longer would only lead to embarrassment sadly.
One thing I don't get is why the hell are people here so against the FTC? It's like the majority of posters here support Microsoft and apparently lisa is the bad guy for trying to rein in these corps from a lopsided position...jesus man these mega corporations arent our friends and we should be supporting regulators not acting as cheerleaders for corpos.
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Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
Well the CMA definitely had monopolism concerns over the nascent cloud market and forced MS into making structural concessions in order to get the deal done. Just because the FTC was ineffective it doesn't mean there weren't issues to be addresssed.
Honestly, anyone expressing support for this merger is in my view ignorant or playing console favourites. Its not desirable on any level other than the basest quick cash-grab. That being said, I've thought since day#1 it would go through with structural remedies... because money talks.
Let's be honest about MS intentions: They see the gaming market as highly lucrative one suitable for long-term monetization, and also one that happens to have exceptionally high synergy with their other businesses. They want to "own" gaming in the same way they largely "own" the market for desktop operating systems, the way they tried to leverage that monopoly to "own" the browser market... etc.
They aren't a friend to gamers! Its simply asinine to think so. That's not the sort of motivation you ever see in corporate business!
Moriarty1889
Member
FTC Is clutching at straws…….it’s OVER. Get over yourselves, you LOST.
rabbity-thing
Member
Or they recognize that this merger is a bad thing. This buyout helps literally no one outside of the interested parties and should not have happened. It consolidates too much market share. To be honest, it's not going to help the interested parties much either. If MS wanted to use Activision's IP's to make money from competing consoles, it might be worthwhile, but I'm pretty sure it's just a really expensive way for MS to pretend they have exclusive content. Honestly, if MS intends to keep most of the content off of, say, PS5 and potentially Switch 2, it'll have been an absolutely stupid waste of money. They'll have all those exclusive titles available for a consumer base that they have trained to not want to purchase games.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Don't @ me 6 months later with this post if the FTC actually does manage to do something
Daniel_Mallorca1985
Member
jayj
Banned
This. She cries and moans over every stupid tech media deal that is a total non-issue, yet she refuses to touch these mega-corporate mega-deals in other sectors and industries.
ZVWQP-9B8TM-VH9CT
Member
BuT tHeY aRe so GooD gUys, tHey GivE uS gAmEpAsS.
Syphon Filter
Member
what is the ubisoft thing about? havent kept up.
PaintTinJr
Member
Unless you can rule out that this investigation into anti-trust provided no cross agency data, or the leaks, as a result of this action, didn't help the IRS with their information to uncover $28B in back taxes owed, we can't say if her limited budget has provided meaningful returns.
You completely misunderstand what happened in the US with the FTC failure to get a injunction, which should have been a formality, as they probably assumed on the previous state of the law.
The ruling, effectively rewrites and changes US law and sets new precedence, unless overruled, because the burden of proof for an injunction was previously 10 times lower than the burden of proof to convict of what the accused is suspected of doing. A lower court judge making them prove the entire case for a meagre injunction is completely redundant. If they can prove the entire case in that short a time frame, why would they need an injunction to begin with? It is either total idiocy or corruption IMHO, and given that they are all judges and well educated it is more logical to favour the latter than the former.
What happened with the CMA is very important, because Microsoft willingly agreed to the CMA SLC claims of them holding the cloud rights for ATVI games in the US, and everywhere outside the EU. Had Microsoft refused to divest the US rights and got the deal through, you would have a point, but the UK have regulated the rights for the US with Microsoft's cooperation, so that is impacting US citizen and is a matter of fact that Microsoft recognised and accepted the anti-trust issue presented by the CMA, which the FTC can cite as admission or acknowledgement from Microsoft to support part of their accusations at the very least. These are issues of fact, as is the fact the CMA fully blocked the original merger that the FTC opposed.
Daniel_Mallorca1985
Member
MS says that enough is enough
Microsoft Tells 9th Circ. UK OK On Activision Is Good Enough - Law360
The United Kingdom's decision to greenlight Microsoft's $68.7 billion deal with Activision Blizzard is reason enough to stop the Ninth Circuit from reviving a failed bid to pause the merger while it's being challenged by gamers and the Federal Trade Commission, the tech behemoth has argued.
www.law360.com
We’ll see what happens during the next weeks
MarkMe2525
Gold Member
I see you are at it again. Never change.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
The Acceptance stage is a bit delayed in this ones case.
PaintTinJr
Member
What? Making an argument in good faith while accepting that the system of the world is completely broken? Yep, guilty as charged.
In the UK, and probably the EU, Australia, New Zealand, to name just 30 or more countries. That injunction would have been granted in a heartbeat to their country's regulator.
Only in the US (out of that group) does it seem you have all the trappings of a normal functioning democracy, but just the implementation is random at state level to like something other than democracy.
Within the EU, at a local EU27 level there will be nation states, like your state of California that have complete randomness, but that rarely survives the EU court of appeal, or a follow from the first test, unlike the random things that get past the lower courts in US states and sometimes the Supreme Court.
I think about Oracle vs Google over Java's use, that was sold and marketed as "write once, run anywhere" being one that should have never needed multiple cases at local level and a Supreme court ruling to concluded the obvious, and even then 2 of 6 supreme court judges couldn't get the obvious correct.
BouncyFrag
Member
Time for a break on this story. Shit will ramp back up again when the CoDs hit gamepass.
MarkMe2525
Gold Member
I'm not picking on you due to this individual argument. It's your body of work. At this point the "anti-MS" prophetic takes are derivative and consistently shown to be off the mark. It lends no credibility to your arguments when they all boil down to "MS bad and will have their comeuppance anyday now". It actually hurts your arguments and your own credibility.
On the positive side, your assertions/speculation is usually well written, and even if I don't buy then, you can tell your spend a good amount of energy thinking about them.
Daniel_Mallorca1985
Member
What is the chance the FTC will win the admin trial?