There’s been plenty of talk about Microsoft, Xbox, and the Xbox Game Pass over the last several months, and for good reasons. After all, Microsoft laid off a bunch of people after doing the Activision Blizzard merger, then Xbox had some of its studios shut down, despite one of them making an award-winning title the previous year, and the Game Pass has had its own controversies lately. Specifically, Microsoft decided to “update” some of the tiers for the pass, and it hasn’t sat well with many people. One of those people includes the FTC! That’s right, they’re back at it again and claim that this is the proof that the Microsoft/Activision Blizzard merger was a bad idea.
If you recall, the FTC and Sony teamed up to try and stop the merger of the two massive companies because of various anti-trust issues they “foresaw” while also claiming that this would “hurt consumers” over time. Sure enough, as noted by VGC, the FTC is noting that what’s going on with the tiers of the Game Pass proves that Xbox/Microsoft is hurting its consumers just to make things better for themselves:
“Product degradation—removing the most valuable games from Microsoft’s new service—combined with price increases for existing users, is exactly the sort of consumer harm from the merger the FTC has alleged.” They noted in a statement. The FTC also posited that, “combined with Microsoft’s reduced investments in output and product quality via employee layoffs, are the hallmarks of a firm exercising market power post-merger.”
Oh, but they weren’t done, as they called out Microsoft specifically for some of the things they said during the case that went its way:
“Microsoft promised that ‘the acquisition would benefit consumers by making [CoD] available on Microsoft’s Game Pass on the day it is released on console (with no price increase for the service based on the acquisition).’”
Obviously, that didn’t happen, as you have to pay for the higher tiers to get the day-one release of the newest entry.
The FTC is pushing hard on this because of how it’s filing an appeal to try and force the merger to be dissolved. Microsoft has responded to this claim, stating that the FTC is being “misleading,” but is it? The Game Pass has lost one of its most basic and useful tiers in light of one that is more expensive and doesn’t have the day-one drop.
Plus, Microsoft’s other actions do line up with what the FTC is saying, so they could be in trouble.
