The title is a little misleading. This ruling is only regarding the preliminary injunction. There is still an ongoing suit with the FTC and we will need to wait for that to be resolved. However, knowing how these things go, Microsoft will make a ton of promises about creating jobs, keeping their content available to everyone, and agreeing to play fair. They will get approval and immediately turn around and terminate a ton of jobs, start making things exclusive, and backtrack on their promises. Then…nothing will happen. There will be no repercussions. Rinse and repeat.
this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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Thank the GOP for basically ridding the US of antitrust law, which is now basically no longer a thing.
contemporary democrats are not any better, they make hella frequent concessions to anti-competitive business practices under the guise of licensing or stimulus
This is why US democrats are considered center-right compared to the rest of the world.
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Far from perfect? Yes. Bad? Very often. Not any better than Republicans when it comes to corporate interests? Absolutely not.
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The guys who claim capitalism works because a free market will create better things through competition. Guess they weren't so much for the competition stuff and just became puppets for corporations. We also have it completely legal to openly bribe politicians which makes zero fucking sense, except we call it lobbying so it somehow becomes okay.
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I think they're still there, just haven't been trotted out in recent history. And mergers keep getting approved.
The last merger that got blocked was almost 50 years ago, I believe. So yeah...it's probably dead.
Which was that? Also, DraftKings and FanDuel got rejected about 10 years ago
I want to say it was in the telecoms industry. But I completely forgot about that merger you mentioned. Thanks for reminding me.
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It's my understanding that Microsoft can now close the deal and acquire ABK before the FTC trial would even take place (as soon as July 18th, though unlikely given the new UK CMA negotiations). What happens to the suit if the merger is already complete?
Probably a fine that's simply justified as "operating costs". It's actually kinda bullshit, they shouldn't be allowed to buy up all the NA competition. Next is probably EA. Thankfully Sony saw this coming and started investing in new studios and IP.
How does one bring Teddy Roosevelt back from the grave? I'm uh...asking for a friend? Yeah. Let's go with that.
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Capital wins again. If only the FTC didn't sit on its ass for the last 40 years, maybe such market consolidation wouldn't be allowed and normalized.
Also shout-out to this comm. The Beehaw community seems delighted. You can sometimes really tell which instances skew toward leftists vs liberals
The fact that it was challenged at all is a huge step in the right direction. Couple of years ago, the FTC wouldn’t even bat an eye with these mergers. The new chair, Lina Khan seems to be determined to reduce the power of monopolies.
Which is a good thing, if this isn’t obvious.
The problem lies with the complete out of touch judges now.
Oh no, those judged seem touched. Maybe the need another sponsored yaht trip to clear their heads.
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You can "rah rah" about exclusivity all day long. What needs to be acknowledged is how huge this is in terms of developers under one company. As far as I can think of, there's never been anything like it. I don't think it's gonna be for the better, I mean this is the same company responsible for this
GFWL was one of the worst attempts to compete with Steam I've ever seen, and also one of the worst software experiences I've ever had. I never got more than an hour into GTA4 because of it and how intolerant of bullshit software I am. Valve should have put their feet down back then and said "no secondary launcher dependencies".
Game pass is OK in terms of value if you play lots of games, but the software it uses is not great, despite being leagues better than GFWL. Windows also sucks, but I'm stuck with it due to work :/
I might be a little more upset if I could remember the last activision blizzard game I felt was worth playing.
Overwatch 1 the first two years or so was pretty sick. Was definitely one of the most funs I've played. Now it's just skin shop with some maps to dress up in.
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I'm all for this merger. Maybe Microsoft can use it as leverage against Sony to avoid needless exclusivity
This is a bad take. Any and all large corporate mergers are bad.
My other stance is that Activision is so shitty to its workers and customers, let's give someone else a try
See, I agree with this angle, but at the same time it kind of feels like a Pyrrhic victory.
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Microsoft gaming strategy does benefit gamers. Which counteracts the problem of losing a competitor.
Microsoft doesnt care about profits on single products much compared to the grand strategy they follow. For example AoE4 and all the aoe franchise doesnt really give a lot of profit Microsoft would care about, yet they keep investing and updating it bc they like it and like the strategic benefit.
Not caring as strictly about profit means you dont get as many greedy microtransactions and more balanced approaches. The game pass is also a really cheap deal if you play variety
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I expect this to make exclusivity even worse
Why? Microsoft hasnt been pushing for it like Sony has. Sony has been crazy anti competitive.
One company buying another is always anti-competitive. The literal definition of removing competition.
Future Bethesda games are exclusive. They weren’t going to be, but they are now.
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Part of the problem is that since Sony is so heavily invested in exclusives, if Microsoft doesn't have any exclusives and all their games also come out of Playstation, that's incentive for people to purchase a PS5 over an Xbox because they know they'll get all of the games that both Sony and Microsoft make. So even if Microsoft doesn't want to do exclusives, they kind of have to if they want to keep people from just purchasing their competitor's console.
Or they can be like me, just get a PC and if you really need a console, a cheap Xbox.
PC gaming is a plus and game pass is a plus. Sony will eventually give me their games. I've bought multiples of every Sony system in the US since the PS1 through the 4. But I'm done with them
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Xbox are not trying to sell consoles, they are trying to sell game pass.
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I would love to hear how this could possibly make exclusivity better. The only possible change is that all of the ABK library becomes Xbox/PC exclusive.
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Seems like a foregone conclusion now that this will go through. Unless I’m mistaken, the only speed bump left is the UK CMA appeal in two weeks.
The worst bit is, it seems like the CMA will negotiate with them. This might be well and truly over.
I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t go through. I stand to benefit from the acquisition as a GP subscriber but I’m definitely worried about corporate consolidation. At least Bobby Kotick will go away
This is one of the few corporate mergers I think could make things better because Blizzard is just THAT bad.
Plus this means the SC themed Halo clone I've wanted for the better part of 2 decades could be a thing.
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Well this is a good way to filter out how many Sony fanboys are here lol
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