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Not even this year's holiday season meant a period of truce for Microsoft, Activision Blizzard, and the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as they have remained in absolute tension over the largest deal in gaming history. Before Christmas Eve, an Activision board of directors was in charge of giving one last present to the North American regulator, marking its position on the acquisition.
ACTIVISION DIRECTIVE LAUNCHES AGAINST FTC
On her Twitter account, Lulu Chen Meservey, Activision Blizzard's vice president of corporate affairs, lashed out at the FTC and her intention to block the purchase that Microsoft announced almost a year ago. Initially, the directive was incisive in stating: "antitrust law exists to protect consumers, not competitors. The FTC is doing the opposite with its baseless and ideological action to stop the agreement between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard."
Antitrust law exists to protect consumers, not competitors.
— Lulu Cheng Meservey (@lulumeservey) December 23, 2022
The FTC is doing the opposite with their baseless, ideologically-driven suit to stop the Microsoft / Activision Blizzard deal.
So let’s talk about it…
According to Meservey, the FTC is operating on ideas of future scenarios that don't exist, claiming that Microsoft will turn Activision Blizzard's most successful IP, Call of Duty, into an Xbox ecosystem exclusive to break the market, harm its competitors and take advantage of it. In this regard, the board mentioned that Microsoft does not have that capacity since the publisher will maintain its independence and considered that making the exclusive IP would be a disaster for Xbox, not a success, since billions of dollars would be lost.
On all counts, the FTC ignores the facts:
— Lulu Cheng Meservey (@lulumeservey) December 23, 2022
1) Taking Call of Duty exclusive would be a disaster for Xbox.
By withholding COD from other platforms, Xbox would torch trust, alienate gamers, and erode much of the value of COD.
And they’d lose billions of dollars.
On the other hand, Lulu Cheng Meservey reaffirmed that the agreement proposal to offer Call of Duty on competing platforms, such as Nintendo, Sony, and PC, is still standing. Still, only the Japanese company home to Mario Bros. has accepted, while Valve said they did not need an agreement because they trusted Phil Spencer, and PlayStation still does not respond. Finally, the board accused the FTC of inventing non-existent markets for this case, such as "cloud gaming" and "high-performance consoles."
3) The FTC cites nonexistent “markets” that they fabricated just for this case. As in literally made up.
— Lulu Cheng Meservey (@lulumeservey) December 23, 2022
Like their concocted “cloud gaming” market and “high-performance console” market limited to Xbox and PlayStation (which btw has over 2X market share). pic.twitter.com/dut092I6wl
Stay informed, at LEVEL UP.
News related: Gamers Sue Microsoft to Stop Buying Activision Blizzard
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