The eternal soap opera surrounding Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard is closer to an end. However, this soap opera still has a few chapters left to conclude, with one particularity: we don’t know how it will do so. The last of these episodes has the FTC and Starfield as the main characters of the show.
After the United Kingdom and the United States opposed the takeover, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission requested a temporary block on the deal, as the hearing was set to begin today, June 22. However, before the hearing started today, the various parties have presented their views on the matter, and the FTC is quite clear: Starfield is its best weapon to prevent the takeover.
The commission’s document, which is available via this link, notes that all the moves made after the ZeniMax and Bethesda purchase are “strong evidence” that Microsoft will make Activision Blizzard titles exclusive in the future. From here, this move would “substantially decrease competition on all consoles,” as gamers would not have access to many of these games on their platforms.
“Defendants made much of the fact that they were concerned about ‘angering gamers’ if Activision games were prevented from being accessible on other consoles, but those same concerns did not impede the decision to [make exclusive] ZeniMax.”
There is no doubt that the agency has before it irrefutable proof, which is none other than that Redfall has only been released on Xbox on consoles… and that Starfield will do the same during the coming month of September. We will have to wait these days to see how everything progresses, but it looks like we are going to have a lot of news.
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