Microsoft has convinced the EU that their Activision deal won’t change anything in PC gaming outside Windows, for a simple reason.
You may have already guessed what it is, but of course, that reason is that Activision Blizzard does not publish their games on PC on any OS outside of Windows. But we’ll go through their arguments.
On page 143 of the document where the EU explained their decision, they shared their train of thought towards this conclusion.
The EU has put their focus on ChromeOS and MacOS as the relevant competition to Microsoft’s Windows for gaming operating systems. As gamers may already know, Activision does not port any games to ChromeOS. They also only port a small number of games to MacOS, in particular legacy games, like Diablo III, Starcraft, and World of Warcraft. MacOS doesn’t get newer games like Overwatch and Call of Duty.
Activision Blizzard’s justification for focusing on Windows is not just that most gamers use Windows anyway, but because non-Windows PCs like MacOS and ChromeOS are generally not installed on computers powerful enough to run their games.
At this point, I will interject and point out that yes, clearly the EU got this all wrong. Apple definitely makes Mac desktop computers, as well as MacBook laptops, that have high end Apple Silicon chips that are more than capable of running the latest games. You can read this article on the topic from XDA Developers last updated just last month for proof of this claim.
On top of that, the EU had completely ignored Valve’s work on the Steam Deck, for which they built SteamOS, a custom Linux OS built just for gaming, that does provide a more console-like gaming experience than Windows gaming devices can. While it’s no longer top of the line, SteamOS’ custom Ryzen 2 chip is still perfectly capable of running modern games.
So, the power and capability to run video games on non-Windows computers does exist. Activision may argue they aren’t likely to profit porting their games to these operating systems, but that’s a different point altogether, that doesn’t account for how the EU got this wrong.
The EU is right to determine that the Microsoft – Activision deal can’t foreclose on the PC games market outside Windows, since Activision’s games have a negligible presence there. The EU revealed here that “less than [0-5]% of Activision Blizzard’s PC gamers play on MacBooks.”
The EU ends their argument by pointing out that gaming is important in the competition between PC operating systems. Unfortunately, because they did not take SteamOS into account, they still end on the same conclusion that the deal could lead to foreclosure.
As for Valve’s side on this, as we know, Valve turned down Microsoft’s offer of ten year contracts for Call of Duty on Steam. Valve is more than happy to let Microsoft publish games on their platform at their discretion.
What that will likely mean is that Call of Duty will continue to come on Steam, in the same way as Overwatch 2 will be. But Activision still won’t put in the work to make these games playable on the Steam Deck.
Maybe Valve feels that they shouldn’t push their Steam Deck initiative onto the developers. It certainly hasn’t hurt the platforms success.
