It’s been reported that the FTC may end up approving the Microsoft deal to acquire Activision Blizzard.
As reported by the New York Post, their sources claim that one of the Democratic members of the four person FTC panel investigating the deal has changed their mind and now supports Microsoft’s acquisition.
If true, this person would join the one Republican person in the panel who also supports the merger. Based on FTC’s rules, if they went to a vote on their initial plans to sue Microsoft to block the deal, that vote would go to a tie. That tie would effectively clear the deal with the agency. At the same time, it would undermine FTC chairperson Lina Khan. As the Post explains it, it’s possible that Lina avoids taking this to a vote completely, and will just seek a settlement with Microsoft on certain points of the acquisition instead.
While gamers have been focused on the possible exclusivity of games and how they would affect the industry after this merger, there are other players who are affected and have their inputs on this merger.
As the Post noted, the Communications Workers of America, a labor union associated with the AFL-CIO, has been lobbying Congress to help the deal push through. While it would seem surprising that a union would be helping a corporation, the CWA’s reasoning is that Microsoft would give Blizzard workers an easier path to collective bargaining and/or unionization than what they have under their current leadership.
The Post also notes that Microsoft has been lobbying Democrats for years, giving them possible leverage that doesn’t exist, for example, in other countries like the UK and EU, who are pursuing their own investigations.
On the other hand, even the UK CMA and the EU have been focused on individual games and not the scale of the purchase itself. When the UK CMA published the arguments Sony and Microsoft made about the acquisition, a big point of discussion from both companies has been Call of Duty. On the other hand, the last news we had reported on EU’s investigation, the EU had to clarify they wouldn’t just block the deal because one EU employee wanted to favor one company over the other.
If there is a case for either these or any other countries that Microsoft would be too big a company after this acquisition, it hasn’t been made public yet.
A big sticking point with all these regulators is that Microsoft has still not committed to any potential compromises to water down the deal. If this is because they think they can take it all, they may have just gotten one step closer to doing so.
Source: New York Post
