Microsoft’s recent efforts to offer concessions to and sign contracts with competing platform owners that include a 10-year deal for Call of Duty might be enough to satisfy European regulators when it comes to the company’s deal to acquire Activision Blizzard.
This comes from a report from Reuters where sources say that these deals might be just enough to satisfy doubts about competition and antitrust concerns. The European Commission is one of the regulatory bodies that is reviewing the deal, and the report also says that we shouldn’t anticipate any demands that Microsoft sell off any assets to win approval. This is in contrast to the UK CMA, which recently suggested some very big concessions that Microsoft could do to win approval in the UK. Those suggestions included selling off Activision and Blizzard, while buying Candy Crush developer King, and to sell off Activision and, with it, Call of Duty.
Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, has said that the company is ready to offer concessions and strike deals but wasn’t going to be selling off Call of Duty (or, likely, any of the other huge IPs that would come together under the deal).
This also comes as Microsoft has won an important victory from a United States Federal Trade Commission judge. The FTC has granted the company's request to access Documents it requested from Sony that cover exclusivity deals and other relevant information dating back to 2019.
Sony had sought to block access to the documents, but Microsoft issued a subpoena to get the files so it could use them in its defense case against the FTC, which filed a suit seeking to block the Microsoft - Activision Blizzard deal. The FTC judge then granted the documents to Microsoft with a few rules in place, at Sony’s request.
Microsoft can only access the documents for a limited time. Some of the documents that Microsoft originally requested will not be allowed, including evaluations and other files that had to do with Jim Ryan, the President & CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment and other company executives.
