Microsoft has cleared a major hurdle to buy Activision Blizzard after a US judge denied the Federal Trade Commission’s attempt to stop the acquisition.
Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley
sided with the tech company, saying the FTC failed to make a strong case that the Microsoft-Activision merger would hurt competition in the video game industry. “To the contrary, the record evidence points to more consumer access to Call of Duty and other Activision content. The motion for a preliminary
injunction is therefore DENIED,” she wrote.
According to Corley, the proposed merger has already received a great deal of scrutiny, which has “paid off” in pushing Microsoft to address the antitrust concerns.
“Microsoft has committed in writing, in public, and in court to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for 10 years on parity with Xbox. It made an agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Switch. And it
entered several agreements to for the first time bring Activision’s content to several cloud gaming services,” she wrote.
