It’s been an eventful few years for Microsoft, who has recently been on an acquisition spree, buying up smaller studios like Double Fine and larger entities like Bethesda. One of the most recent Microsoft acquisitions that has yet to be verified is Activision Blizzard, which has been objected to by Sony and now some major government regulators. But it seems that players are good with it.
According to a report posted by the U.K.’s Competition & Markets Authority, “Of the 2,100 emails that we reviewed, around three quarters were broadly in favour of the Merger and around a quarter were broadly against the Merger.” That means that roughly 1,575 of the emails received by the company were supportive of Microsoft’s purchase.
The report goes on to list more information about what fans said in favor of and against the merger. Some of the comments include reiterations of the points that Microsoft has been trying to make, like “the Merger will not harm rival consoles because Microsoft has made public and private commitments to keep Activision content, including Call of Duty, non-exclusive.”
In discussing making the next Call of Duty exclusive to Microsoft, some users discussed why that would actually be a harm to the developer: “It is unlikely that Microsoft would make Call of Duty exclusive due to its multiplayer nature. Making Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox would only create a gap in the market that could be filled by a rival cross-platform shooter game.”
Of the 525 emails that the regulator got against the merger, a number of them spoke on the precedent that such a large acquisition will set. “This would be the largest merger in gaming history, paving the way for a potential string of future acquisitions of publishers such as Take Two, EA, Ubisoft, thereby increasing concentration in the market,” one user said
If the regulator is going off popular opinion alone, it seems that there is no reason that Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard acquisition couldn’t move forward. But the comments made about how this could lead to further acquisition of major developers are also worth considering since it could lead to even larger monopolies in the industry.
