Earlier this year, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) blocked Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Since then, Microsoft has been working hard to address the CMA’s concerns since it’s the only remaining major hurdle it has to close the purchase. A recent announcement revealed that Activision Blizzard games were heading to Ubisoft+, a move clearly being made to appease the CMA. It appears it has worked, as the CMA has released a statement saying the sale of Activision’s cloud gaming rights to Ubisoft “substantially addresses previous concerns and opens the door to the deal being cleared.”
It’s not a final approval just yet, because the CMA has identified limited residual concerns with the new deal, it has stated that Microsoft has proposed remedies which the CMA has provisionally concluded should address these issues. The CMA is now consulting on the remedies before making a final decision.
According to the statement published on gov.uk, Microsoft submitted a restructured transaction in August for review and under that new deal, Microsoft will not purchase the cloud gaming rights held by Activision and that it would instead be sold to an independent third party, Ubisoft. This way, it established Ubisoft as a key supplier of content to cloud gaming services, replicating the role that Activision would have played in the market as an independent player.
More importantly, Microsoft will no longer control cloud gaming rights for Activision’s content, so it can’t be in a position to limit access to Activision’s key content to its own cloud gaming service, or to withhold games from rivals. More interestingly, the deal with Ubisoft also requires Microsoft to port Activision games to operating systems other than Windows and support game emulators when requested, addressing the other main shortcoming with the previous package.
It appears that Microsoft has cleared the final hurdle for closing the massive $69 billion deal. We’ll see if the CMA decides to change its mind last minute, but it seems doubtful.
