The giant Microsoft wants to acquire the publisher Activision Blizzard. The news was confirmed by the official statement from Microsoft on their homepage.
This is what happened: In an announcement, Microsoft stated that they want to buy the publisher Activision Blizzard. This is meant to ensure the company’s growth in PC, console, and mobile gaming.
With the acquisition, Microsoft will become the third largest gaming company in the world, following Tencent and Sony. ActiBlizz brings all its franchises with the acquisition, including well-known and large names like Diablo, Warcraft, Call of Duty, and Candy Crush.
The purchase price of ActiBlizz is about 68.7 billion dollars, which has left gamers worldwide speechless.
The purchase price is far above what Microsoft paid for Bethesda and ZeniMax, which was “just” 7.5 billion. It is also well above the price of Zynga, which was bought by Take Two for 14 billion.
Thus, Microsoft now ranks first in the list of the largest acquisitions of gaming companies, with the Zynga deal in second place and the acquisition of Supercell by Tencent in third place (8 billion).
We analyzed the acquisition in the Breaking podcast:
The games from Activision Blizzard will come to Game Pass
What happens next: According to an internal email from Kotick to the employees, such deals take a lot of time. Therefore, the acquisition is expected to be completed in the fiscal year 2023, which ends in July 2023. Until then, Activision Blizzard will continue to operate autonomously.
Once the deal is done, the games from the publisher ActiBlizz are expected to be included in the Xbox and PC Gaming Pass from Microsoft. The already substantial offer will become even more attractive for gamers.
According to Blizzard PR, the much-criticized Bobby Kotick will remain the CEO of Activision Blizzard. Once the deal is completed, the publisher will report directly to Microsoft Gaming CEO, Phil Spencer.
Although Kotick has faced significant criticism in recent months for being partly responsible for the toxic work environment at Blizzard, it seems he will remain in his position.
Just a few minutes after the official announcement, the stock of Activision Blizzard, which had fallen nearly 20% in connection with the sexism scandals, soared.
However, the official statement says that Kotick will continue to work towards improving the work environment at Activision Blizzard. This aligns with Microsoft’s response to the original lawsuits against the publisher.
The news exploded like a bomb
These are the first reactions: The announcement of Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard hit the gaming community like a bomb. On Twitter, the hashtags of both companies immediately landed in the top two positions worldwide:
In the two major gaming subreddits r/games and r/gaming, the topic immediately topped the charts and the threads related to it now have between 800 and 1200 comments, rapidly increasing.
Many comments express shock over the size of Microsoft’s latest “acquisition.” Such a large deal has never happened in the history of gaming, and correspondingly, the reactions from gamers are intense.
- “Excuse me?! Man, this is one of the craziest things that have ever happened in gaming history!” – Drumbas on reddit
- “Microsoft seems serious about making the Xbox Game Pass the ‘Netflix of gaming.'” – OrangeZune on reddit
- “Only the reveal of Half Life 3 would shock me more than this. 70 billion? Insane.” – Nicotine on Twitter
However, criticism and concerns are also being expressed. An acquisition of this size is unparalleled in gaming. Accordingly, some are worried that in a few years, only a few large companies will own everything, which would negatively impact the industry.
Some MeinMMO readers are also concerned:
- “Nice, another monopoly is being built.” – Incursio
- “It’s not good when so much ‘power’, no, expressed differently, when one company takes such a market-dominating position.” – Fyralon.
Notable figures from the industry such as analyst Daniel Ahmad and journalist Jason Schreier share their thoughts on this:
“I’m currently on vacation, but if I weren’t, I’d call some antitrust experts right now. The acquisition of Bethesda and then Activision by Xbox seems to be exactly the type of horizontal acquisition that the DOJ [U.S Department of Justice] wouldn’t approve.”
Daniel Ahmad commented on the tweet, stating that Microsoft would need to pay 3 billion in compensation to Activision if the deal is rejected by antitrust authorities.
What is your opinion on the deal between Microsoft and Activision? Do you think the acquisition is good, or are you more critical? Let us know in the comments.
Microsoft acquires Blizzard – Will Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4 now not be available for PS5?
