Friday 22 September 2023

Microsoft Revised Deal

The UK's competition watchdog has said Microsoft's revised offer to buy the Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard "opens the door" to the deal being cleared. The Competition Markets Authority (CMA) said the updated deal appeared to address concerns it had raised. Under the new proposals, Microsoft will not buy the cloud gaming rights owned by Activision Blizzard. Its original $69bn (£59bn) deal was blocked by UK regulators. Earlier this year, the CMA prevented Microsoft from taking on the whole of Activision over concerns that the deal would harm competition in cloud gaming in the UK. Microsoft then submitted a restructured deal for the competition watchdog to look at last month. Under the new offer, Microsoft agreed to transfer the rights to stream Activision games from the cloud to the French video games publisher Ubisoft for 15 years. The sale to Ubisoft of this portion of Activision's business will mean the cloud streaming of games like Call of Duty, Overwatch and World of Warcraft will not come under Microsoft's control.