&quot;Activision CEO Bobby Kotick Knew for Years About Sexual-Misconduct Allegations at Videogame Giant&quot;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;activision-videogames-bobby-kotick-sexual-misconduct-allegations-11637075680" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;activision-videogames-bobby-kot...</a> — mirror at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.fo&#x2F;fzdAv" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.fo&#x2F;fzdAv</a>And if you&#x27;re completely out of the loop: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;California_Department_of_Fair_Employment_and_Housing_v._Activision_Blizzard" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;California_Department_of_Fair_...</a>

There’s probably an essay that could be written to answer your question, but the short version is that Kotick is not a gamer, but an executive. He specialises in extracting maximum value from an existing property, everything else be damned.For example, Activision had a successful franchise Call of Duty that did releases every 2 years or so. Kotick’s insight was that they could release one every year and basically print money. He was right. He then used that money to acquire Blizzard, a company that had many beloved franchises. He then applied those same principles to the running of Blizzard, to the point where the company releases half baked, buggy, awful excuses for games. An example of this is Warcraft III Reforged. They did it because re-releases of old games are a reliable way to monetise nostalgia.And that’s just the somewhat justifiable part. Because making money is good, right? Shareholders love that shit.What’s less defensible is the toxic work culture that was fostered under him, where sexual harassment was endemic. Of course he never saw the fallout of that. They fired some patsies and called it a day.

As a developer I have a strong dislike against CEOs that say things like...&gt; The goal that I had (...) was to take all the fun out of making video games.&gt; The executive said that he has tried to instill into the company culture &quot;skepticism, pessimism, and fear&quot; of the global economic downturn<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gamespot.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;activision-games-to-bypass-consoles&#x2F;1100-6226758&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gamespot.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;activision-games-to-bypass...</a>

Can you supply some context to this denounciation?

At least you don&#x27;t lose money though.

&gt;I remember a Starcraft II fan map named Bobby Kotick TD. If he hits you, you loose money. If you hit him, you loose money too.I love it! Political Opinions as a Game!

I remember a Starcraft II fan map named Bobby Kotick TD. If he hits you, you loose money. If you hit him, you loose money too. It was banned after a short time.To be honest, I think Microsoft and Activision deserve each other.

On the other hand, since the news that he knew about years of sexual harassment at the company the stock has dropped 33%. If &quot;maximising shareholder value&quot; is the only metric for success it seems that making one of your employees kill themselves for failing to tackle a culture of abuse seems like a poor way to do that.

I don’t think this acquisition is about stock value as much as it is about acquiring IP and games for MS game pass offering.

Kotick got a good run for the shareholders - he&#x27;s now a liability having had all the sexual harassment under his watch.  The sexual harassment&#x2F;lack of leadership discipline has discounted the sale price of ATVI (microsoft swoops in) - he sticks with firm for a bit during transition to ensure smooth transfer and steps away afterwards.  I don&#x27;t see any other way - he&#x27;s become a liability especially for a company like Microsoft.

Value skyrocketed, but IP was demolished. Warcraft and Starcraft are two of the most popular game franchises ever. Today, nobody cares about the story of these games anymore. Popular characters have been written into a wall or killed off in an unsatisfying way. The overall story is a tangled mess of retcons, 1000 IQ BBEG, and directionless plot lines. While Activision made record profits, they did it at the cost of player numbers. Every new character is shallow, uninspired, quickly killed off, or never used again after their initial use(Bwonsamdi, Rexar, many more). By failing to appease players with the story, and putting systems designers in charge of gameplay, they have been draining the value of their IP for the last 10 years.For games to be successful today, they need popularity. Twitch streamers need to play it. Youtubers need to make &quot;how-tos&quot;, and word of mouth is king. Activision drove the final nail in their coffin with the PR nightmare this year. No amount of necromancy (Warcraft Reforged, Classic WoW, Diablo 2) can save the company long term.

Short term it was increased but how much long term damage was done?  Warcraft III Reforged has yet to receive most of the promised features or even a single patch.

Activision&#x27;s value skyrocketed under Kotick, not sure why they would want to replace him.

That doesn&#x27;t say that Kotick will be gone, it says that he&#x27;ll be reporting up to Microsoft.

No, he&#x27;s just going to report to Phil Spencer it looks like. He will still lead Activision Blizzard. Might be different once we know more details.

There&#x27;s still a CEO of Mojang. So maybe they keep him, maybe they won&#x27;t.They wouldn&#x27;t muddy their happy upbeat acquisition announcement by mentioning they&#x27;re pushing him out, though.So it&#x27;s wrong to draw any conclusions yet.

Literally the next sentence:&gt; Once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming.So no, they aren&#x27;t keeping him around. Good call.

Maybe they can&#x27;t get rid of Mr. Kotick yet..

Everything under Blizzard&#x27;s portfolio feels like it has been left to rot. The only thing they seem to put effort into is their Pay-To-Win card game, Hearthstone.Unfortunately even under new management I don&#x27;t see Starcraft getting much love, the focus is now on cross-platform games and RTS games are PC only (which is a small niche compared to the overall market).

I share your dismay. Even if you&#x27;re someone who doesn&#x27;t care about the issues that have come to light over the past year, the blatant mismanagement (dare I say running into the ground) of the once golden Blizzard portfolio has been painful as a long-time Starcraft 2 fan.For a moment, I was truly hopeful that we might see some reinvigoration for blundered projects like the Warcraft III reforged.Perhaps even some hope that Microsoft might breathe new life into Starcraft II, which still stands as an incredible game.&#x2F;sigh

I&#x27;d buy shares right now if they had gotten rid of Kotick.

This can&#x27;t be permanent.  I bet this is to keep the markets happy in the short term while this gets absorbed, and then Kotick will &quot;retire&quot; at some point in the next year.

The reason he&#x27;s still there is because this deal has probably been in the works for a while, and they weren&#x27;t going to cut him loose until it settled.  I&#x27;m sure that as soon as it&#x27;s possible after the acquisition that he&#x27;ll suddenly decide to spend more time with his family, pursue other interests, or get sent to the farm to play with the other dogs, whatever euphemism you like.

I&#x27;m hiring now, and I had the pleasure of interviewing someone who was leaving Blizzard. He was pretty sharp and I was bummed that I had to pass on him.Anyway, I think this acquisition will actually stop the bleeding snd create some stability

If you take over a company, you don&#x27;t necessarily want to plunge it into even more chaos than the acquisition will create already by immediately getting rid of the CEO. It&#x27;s entirely possible that they will get rid of him after a transition phase.

Businesses learned long ago there are plenty of very easy legal ways of making people leave of &quot;their own accord&quot; by adjusting work environment factors to a point no sane person would stay in the position.

Honestly, this is the sort of thing they have to say right now - the deal isn&#x27;t closed yet, and saying they&#x27;re going to dump him might lead to shareholder lawsuits, especially if the acquisition is blocked.Realistically, there&#x27;s a high chance that within a few months of the acquisition being completed he&#x27;ll be expected to leave quietly.

Read the whole paragraph. Once the deal closes Activision will report to Phil.

Dismay over Kotick actively hiding sexual abuse and protecting the abusers is a &quot;woke uprising&quot;? That&#x27;s a shitty take.

Or May be the whole woke uprising thing was to drive the market cap down so Microsoft could get a better deal. As usual the media doing the bidding for the big tech.

Probably keep him until they restructure the Activision Blizzard somewhat. Like Separating Blizzard and studios under Activision if needed.

No way Microsoft lets this guy stick around. This is the best soft landing the board could possibly provide for the ceo.

yeah, it&#x27;s going to take a little time for Microsoft to worm its fingers in there and get a feel for a massive org like that.  I&#x27;ve got a feeling Kotick is going to be out of there within a few years.

I would _guess_ that ousting a CEO AND acquiring the core company at the same time are expensive propositions - I&#x27;d also guess that MSFT fully plans to address the leadership issue there (Kotick) but going to give him a year to age out of the newly acquired company and take his golden parachute elsewhere.Smaller M&amp;A where it&#x27;s easier to swap the leader (like a startup - which most of us are used to) is MUCH easier&#x2F;cheaper&#x2F;faster than swapping out an established CEO of a public company.They&#x27;ll do it because he&#x27;s a liability and they want to make a statement to the new company - but it&#x27;ll be slow.

Does anyone has any doubts it&#x27;s anything but a transitional position ?

Agreements like that are evidence that boards don&#x27;t always take into account the health of the company as a whole when making decisions.

Microsoft is spending $70 billion all-cash on this, an extra quarter billion isn&#x27;t much. I don&#x27;t expect they&#x27;ll cut him loose until after all the ink is dry.

How long is that valid for? Also does buyout by Microsoft count as a “change of control” … I’d bet Microsoft would wait out whatever time span that’s valid for and then immediately refuse to give him another one and can him…

Aren’t those types of severance packages typically invalid if you’re fired for good cause (like sexual harassment)?

Looks like he&#x27;d be terminating &quot;with good reason&quot; himself after a change of control and getting $292m?

Stephen Totilo shared this back in June of last year. Apparently Bobby&#x27;s got an agreement signed that if he gets terminated he makes $292 million off of it, double what he made last year.So that might be part of it.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;stephentotilo&#x2F;status&#x2F;1407658278893592579" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;stephentotilo&#x2F;status&#x2F;1407658278893592579</a>

The most important question I have is: will they replace Bobby Kotick?EDIT: &quot;Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard. [...] he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture.&quot;Shame on you, Microsoft.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.xbox.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;2022&#x2F;01&#x2F;18&#x2F;welcoming-activision-blizzard-to-microsoft-gaming&#x2F;?ocid=Evergreen_soc_omc_xbo_tw_Photo_lrn_1.18.1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.xbox.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;2022&#x2F;01&#x2F;18&#x2F;welcoming-activision-...</a>

Indeed. I remember drawing my own maps on paper before we had a computer at home. It seems so simple looking back.

Right? It came to Switch but not macOS, boggles the mind.Larger install base I guess. I’d been waiting for the Mac version for years and am surprised it never came.

They were good citizens of macOS too. Up until Overwatch.

Not just &quot;like&quot; - they are a completely different company.It&#x27;s well known that in the wake of the huge success of WoW they had to completely re-organize the company in order to be able to properly support a game with an active audience of that size. Their size, their structure, their culture, everything changed.

All the original creators of the magical IPs left a long time ago.

They&#x27;ve now fallen so low, it&#x27;s like it&#x27;s a completely different company.

Back in the day, Starcraft was my thing. I didn&#x27;t get into Diablo too much, but I thought it was cool. I remember playing the original up to the final level. A few years ago, I played and beat it on my retro PC, and it was exactly as fun as I remembered it.[0] I tried Warcraft, but I didn&#x27;t get into it.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theandrewbailey.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;180&#x2F;Diablo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theandrewbailey.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;180&#x2F;Diablo</a>

Even outside of the recent scandal, I&#x27;ve long had mixed feelings about Blizzard: harassing independent servers, always-connected DRM (I got booted out of single-player CoD: MW so many times), and milking franchises with remasters. I will say, though, that after a several year hiatus, a friend and I have discovered StarCraft 2 co-op with weekly mutations, and it&#x27;s a lot of fun.SC 2 recently went free-to-play. If the rest of their catalog is added to Game Pass, that will be something. Blizzard games have been stubbornly expensive years after release. I wonder what this means for Battle.net?

The name Blizzard is still magical to me. As the maybe 15-year old playing Warcraft II and drawing strategies on a piece of paper.
I don&#x27;t play computer games anymore. But it was magical.

Apparently the price tag is $68.7 billion. How long until they recoup the investment?<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;finance.yahoo.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;microsoft-buy-activision-blizzard-mega-133100552.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;finance.yahoo.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;microsoft-buy-activision-bliz...</a>

You&#x27;ve got to be kidding. The version offered on Game Pass is the &quot;Standard&quot; edition, that isn&#x27;t just a &quot;free to play&quot;, &quot;stripped down&quot; version of the game. It is 95% of the game! The remaining 5% is almost always cosmetic items, like skins or cars, that really do not impact the core experience.There are some exceptions, like Destiny 2 I believe, where the meaningful DLC is excluded, but that is not the rule. Game Pass is an incredible deal.

That is not at all the case. I&#x27;ve played over 20 games, full games, on Game Pass.

This “f2p” versions cost 60 dollars.You’re getting the “standard” edition of the game. Sure, you’re not getting the expansion packs or other cosmetics, but neither is any other person that doesn’t buy the deluxe editions.

What is Halo missing? MCC and infinite have all the relevant content, unless you wanted a dress-up game instead of an FPS.

If they want to be all-in on game pass, then they should actually go all in.As somebody who just got game pass, I feel kinda cheated for what I get; All the games offered there are the “f2p” versions, even MS first party titles like Halo only offer the “default” versions to play “for free” when paying a monthly subscription.It’s like those free versions Epic hands out; They are playable, but they usually lack any and all of the “extra DLC content” that too often are needed to make a game actually fully fleshed out.

Diablo 4 on Game Pass definitely makes for an interesting value proposition. Maybe login will actually work this time at launch :p

Are you sure everything that Activision &#x2F; Blizzard publishes will be on GamePass day one?

&gt; Upon close, we will offer as many Activision Blizzard games as we can within Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass, both new titles and games from Activision Blizzard’s incredible catalog. [Xbox PR]&gt; The acquisition also bolsters Microsoft’s Game Pass portfolio with plans to launch Activision Blizzard games into Game Pass [MS PR]In case anyone still doubts that Microsoft is all-in on Game Pass.

Not shaming is not the same as condoning. Imagine actually expecting a company to comment on every story.

Nobody was forcing them to buy them. They were allowed, they chose not to.

If they were already in talks to buy, how much of it is a case of &quot;wasn&#x27;t willing&quot;, and how much is it &quot;wasn&#x27;t allowed&quot;?For all the flak ActiBlizzard deserves for this situation, I&#x27;d be happier if it were illegal for Microsoft to publicly give them shit about while already in talks to buy. There&#x27;s just way too many ways to abuse that for leverage.

I guess the price had already been settled but they probably wanted to distance themselves from the accusations against the company.

I think it’d be problematic for a buyer to take public actions in devaluing its target amid takeover talks. Not just for Activision — but it’d be impossible to see Microsoft’s denunciations as principled rather than profit-motivated

Huh? They did.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;11&#x2F;18&#x2F;22789881&#x2F;microsoft-xbox-boss-phil-spencer-deeply-troubled-by-activision-blizzard-bobby-kotick" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;11&#x2F;18&#x2F;22789881&#x2F;microsoft-xbox-...</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gameinformer.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;01&#x2F;11&#x2F;phil-spencer-discusses-xboxs-relationship-with-activision-blizzard-and-dealing-with" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gameinformer.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;01&#x2F;11&#x2F;phil-spencer-discuss...</a>

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2021-11-18&#x2F;xbox-chief-says-he-s-evaluating-relationship-with-activision" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2021-11-18&#x2F;xbox-chie...</a>

Lose-lose situation. If Microsoft talked shit about ATVI in the months leading up to the acquisition, people would accuse them of doing it in bad faith to hurt the share price and make the acquisition cheaper.

They weren&#x27;t shaming them publicly, they were shaming them privately to drive the purchase price down.It&#x27;s self-serving, but more effective, as it actually got Blizzard to do another round of cleaning house.

Wow. No wonder Microsoft wasn&#x27;t willing to shame Activision like Sony and others, they were in talks to buy it. Ridiculous.

I am betting this is not going to last. Their core products are losing customers.

Nadella transformed a company that was at risk of turning into the next IBM into the 2nd most valuable company in the world. Where have you been the past 9 years of his tenure?

Wow, has MS gotten that profitable or has Acti&#x2F;Blizz been doing that badly to be considered a „good deal“?Tho, it certainly fits what MS has been going for with its gaming division; Game pass ultimate has a weird lack of „third party aaa” titles in certain genres.For example EA Play is included in game pass ultimate, but by now all the new EA stuff is locked behind “EA Play pro”.Having the whole Acti&#x2F;Blizz lineup in there would be quite the offering. Particularly all the Call of Duties were never really sold in a “get all of them!” way. Now all of them might end up for “free” on game pass.

There actually are a ton of gaming companies right now. The indie game space seems to be much healthier and accessible than say, the indie movie business.  I hardly buy AAA titles anymore because you can get so many good games for under $20 dollars made by independent studios.  Of course, this is based on mostly staying on PC and Steam.  I would suspect consoles are not as indie friendly, but it does seem like they have some market access

&gt; resume bumpyes, because what would he do without.

Oddly, the way things had been going with Blizzard over the last few years makes me feel a lot better about MS taking them over.

Yeah, because Activision Blizzard was doing so well on its own

While I mostly agree with you, I think Microsoft is doing this to compete directly with Sony&#x27;s plethora of studios to offer more AAA titles on Xbox and Windows exclusively — so from that light, it&#x27;s not entirely a bad thing.We already know that Bethesda is keeping their autonomy to make the same great games we love from them, and Starfield is a chance to prove it. The only downside being: Playstation owners losing out on playing what may end up being among the most popular titles in the next 5-10 years if Starfield and TES6 are a success.

You are not entitled to play games or buy platforms. It is a net negative for the gaming industry to be limited in their revenue streams. You cannot split the baby because some customers CHOSE to buy PS5 but the game THEY want to play is on Xbox. If they want to play it, buy an XBOX too. If that is too expensive, the gamer should increase their disposable income.Gaming is not a human right.

It&#x27;s hard to imagine they will be much worse than the holding company they bought it from. Microsoft have been a lot better custodians of Minecraft than most people thought they would be. Same with github or a number of other acquisitions.But I agree the concentration is still a problem in itself, even if the owners are OK.

I think there should be more (gaming) companies, and (gaming) companies should not be owned by the platforms, so I see this as a pretty big negative for the industry and customers.Congrats to Phil on his resume bump I guess.

And Halo, if we&#x27;re counting seminal console franchises.

well, maybe once they&#x27;re in the extinguish phase, it will make room for other gaming companies?

They do own those legacy games but sadly Starcraft is not going to be re-born anytime soon - maybe warcraft IV but we will see.What will happen to Bobby Kotick now?

Haven&#x27;t you heard? They &lt;3 Linux now, they&#x27;ll never use their position to lock people into their platforms again. They even promised they&#x27;ll be good.

Awesome news for gaming on Linux. As we all know Microsoft &lt;3 Linux.

&gt;&gt;&gt; Disney of GamingYes. I mean the sub-headline is XboxGamePass is now 25M+ subscribers. Logical next step isn&#x27;t even games: it&#x27;s convergence.Curious we don&#x27;t see similar consolidation in the Japanese market: Square Enix, Konami, Capcom, Tecmo, Bandai Namco, From. Even Nintendo. All seem attractive targets, no?

Hopefully they can start to force Sony into a world where cross console play is a thing if they have enough of the marquee franchises.

Microsoft owns CoD, Doom, Quake, Minecraft, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, and soon Warcraft, Starcraft, and Overwatch.They&#x27;re becoming the Disney of gaming, which is scary, but hey, Microsoft gonna Microsoft.

&gt; I hope PC gaming can detach from Microsoft as soon as possible to be honestIn what way is PC gaming attached to Microsoft? Microsoft Game Studios doesn&#x27;t have a lot of market share in PC games besides Minecraft, and the industry is very diverse. Most games happen to run on Windows, but apart from DirectX they have resisted every attempt from Microsoft to use that in any way.If PC gaming is attached to anyone it&#x27;s Valve, but even that is slowly changing.

I agree with your view point - however it’s hard to see any other outcome for the AAA franchises. Player expectations of a modern title are increasing - as are the time, human, and fiscal capital required to ship a modern title - years of engineering, hundreds of people, hundreds of millions of dollars. The risks are huge - missing your date, or game experience can sink a company - consider what Cyberpunk almost did to Projekt CD RED - to ship they cut to the bone very late in the day. The economics of the AAA business is optimizing towards managing and distributing that risk thru supply-chain and scale.  I don’t see a better way on this current trajectory.

I would think women employees would be harassed less under Microsoft

It’s annoying that MS will probably pull the same crap they did when they purchased Bethesda a couple of years ago: we won’t see releases of most Activision&#x2F;Blizzard games on Sony consoles going forward.This exclusivity game has to stop. I understand MS’s motivations — they want people to buy their console, after all. But it’s awful that you can make an educated console decision, and then two years later have a good chunk of games stolen from you because of a merger.I concur that I’d really like to see Linux take the PC gaming space over. Personally I feel that we should focus on indie games and low-level platform compatibilty — if enough users switch to Linux, AAA studios will have to follow. Except the MS-owned studios who have a standing order to ignore Linux, of course…

I don&#x27;t really share your impression that everything is consolidated under large developers. Most of the games I&#x27;ve bought over the last few years have all been from relatively small studios (as far as I know anyway, it can be hard to tell).

Games are software. Changing the upper management&#x2F;ownership isn&#x27;t going to change deliverables. If anything, it could delay releases even further out with new overlords. Certainly they can clean house of the former companies HR department as well as any senior leaders that did nothing with previous issues.It will take a long time before anything material comes from this from a games perspective. I would assume legal agreements are in place for cash-cow games like Call Of Duty on other platforms so that should alleviate any anti-competitive investigation.

I think for gaming this is pretty negative that everything is consolidated under large developers. I also don&#x27;t think that the atmosphere under Microsoft will be better than under Activision.I hope PC gaming can detach from Microsoft as soon as possible to be honest.

Hopefully they fire most of the management, retain what technical talent they decide, and effectively reboot the entire company.

I would hope so, I dont see activision blizzard being a great acquistion.

I&#x27;ve never overseen a merger before, let alone one of this scale, so pardon my blatant speculation... but will that really be such an issue?It seems to me that the mismanagement of Acti&#x2F;Blizz is a product of a corrupt corporate apparatus. From the inside of Acti&#x2F;Blizz, the problem is basically intractible, but I don&#x27;t think that really applies the same way once you install higher rungs of authority. MS is no stranger to acquisitions, either, so it&#x27;s not as though they will be asleep at the wheel during this transition.

Given that they plan to keep Bobby Kotick on, I don&#x27;t think Microsoft understands the problem with ABK all that well.

I wonder if he realises what &quot;fun&quot; he&#x27;s going to have over the next years cleaning out the cesspit that is Blizzard

What&#x27;s funny is that when EPB of Chattanooga decided they wanted a Fiber Network to build their smart power grid around, Comcast said no.So they built their own, and Comcast started suing them. A lot of stupid lobby fights later, and EPB Fiber Optics became a separate company with a loan from EPB (power company). Both wholly owned by the City of Chattanooga. EPB had to keep all power monies and all internet monies completely seperate in order to operate; otherwise, they would have too much of a competitive advantage over Comcast.For the customer, it&#x27;s just EPB, but for legalize and accountants, it&#x27;s two completely separate companies, and money isn&#x27;t allowed to go from the power division to the internet division and vice versa.Imagine if these conglomerates had to do similar type of accounting. I don&#x27;t know if that would be a positive for the customer&#x2F;consumer, but it&#x27;s an interesting thought exercise. Amazon might even consider shutting down quite a bit of e-commerce if they couldn&#x27;t subsidize it with AWS...

400 - 1400 (Feudal economics)1850 - 1920 (Railroad + oil&#x2F;steel trusts)1880 - 1982 (ATT)1950 - 1975 (IBM)1985 - 2000 (Intel&#x2F;Microsoft)2008 - current (Google&#x2F;Apple&#x2F;Amazon)2014 - current (Meta)It&#x27;s the nature of technology to produce consolidation, before the next breakthrough occurs and incumbents are typically swept away.On the plus side, the length of dominant periods seems to be decreasing.And realistically, data portability standards and pricing for cloud &amp; ability to use independent app stores are the biggest tweaks I&#x27;d make.

&gt; [...] if Satya and the Board spin off gaming into an independent company at some point.I certainly think this should happen.The trillion dollar giants should not span multiple industries. They have absurd monopoly power and can make growing your own niche impossible.Why does a cloud computing &#x2F; operating system vendor &#x2F; hardware manufacturer &#x2F; business software &#x2F; developer tooling company also own the third biggest gaming outfit?Why, for that matter, are Amazon and Apple also movie studios (and soon to be game studios)?This is ridiculous. These companies never have to compete with you. It&#x27;s easy for them to funnel money into any effort and clone your product. You can struggle to grow revenue and they can simply allocate an engineering team and marketing budget.You&#x27;ll probably also have to buy your competitor&#x27;s products or pay their taxes at some point.

Very impressive indeed. He was backed by a multibillion dollar behemoth and, against all odds, and despite the commercial failure of the Xbox One (something that would’ve bankrupted any other company), he managed to keep the company afloat long enough to launch another product.Spending ~$70bn to acquire another company is also impressive. Sure, Microsoft has limitless resources, and using acquisitions to hurt the competition is something they love to do, but still.. He did it. This is his win.

No chance. COD has consistently been a huge money maker on PS and Vanguard was #1 last year. They would lose out on way too much revenue, not to mention that massive negative sentiment that would bring towards Xbox and big game &#x2F; console manufacturers. I think certain games like Halo and maybe some Bethesda will stay (ones that have previously been exclusive). But acquiring a AAA company and then cutting off half of your customer base seems like a big mistep.

Console exclusivity is no longer the driving force for revenue, that&#x27;s GamePass.Selling full versions everywhere else is good business, we saw that from both Microsoft and Sony making more PC ports - and for Xbox it is yet another driver into their subscription model.

Does CoD become an Xbox&#x2F;Windows exclusive?

The series Microsoft recently put out on Youtube about the history of Xbox is surprisingly good:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=AJYsA1jXf60" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=AJYsA1jXf60</a>

&gt; billions of dollarsHow big were Sony and Nintendo at the time? Even with Microsoft&#x27;s war chest, it was an uphill battle.

I feel like the &quot;at Microsoft&quot; already implies billions of funding. However, teams within big companies are not immune to reduced funding and cancelling if their strategy does not work.

You forget how big Nintendo&#x27;s war chest is

&gt; Congratulations to Phil Spencer, who started out leading an upstart team at Microsoft for a new game console called &quot;Xbox&quot; and is now &quot;CEO of Microsoft Gaming&quot; - a Microsoft Senior Leadership positionYou forgot to mention he started with billions of dollars backing him up. It was not like a small startup or something.

Old Blizzard is dead and has been for almost a decade--the name&#x27;s the same but their job now is not to make great games that push the envelope in game design but rather to manage cash-printing franchises. It&#x27;s hard not to think this when so many of the people behind the original groundbreaking games (StarCraft, WC3, D2) have left the company and in some cases disavowed it.Be happy that old Blizzard happened, I say, and look on with eagerness to new indie studios, many of which are being run by the same Blizzard vets.

Hopefully first they will fire everyone responsible for cultivating a toxic culture culminating in sexually harassing a women to suicide and having a &quot;Cosby&quot; room at events. Don&#x27;t care how good of games they are when thats the company behind them.

As a fellow longtime Blizzard fan and someone who retired from gaming (in part due to being too old for this shit),Don&#x27;t get your hopes up :)

Sounds lovely for the suits.As a longtime Blizzard fan and a former Microsoft employee, maybe I&#x27;m just getting too old for this shit, but there&#x27;s really only one thing I care about:Will they finally start getting the fucking games right again?

Phil Spencer is my favorite executive. His work since he had taken over has been splendid and I like his calm manner of discussing competition. He doesn’t make it into war. He seems like a genuinely nice guy and I am happy to see him succeed.

Phil Spencer only took over after the failure of the Xbox One. They&#x27;ve been killing it since then.

&gt; spin off gaming into an independent company at some pointUnlikely without regulatory intervention. The added value for MS shareholders here is that MS has now more leverage to gently heard gamers towards their platforms.

&gt; Phil Spencer, who started out leading an upstart team at Microsoft for a new game console called &quot;Xbox&quot;According to Wikipedia[0]:&gt; Spencer served as general manager of Microsoft Game Studios EMEA, working with Microsoft&#x27;s European developers and studios such as Lionhead Studios and Rare until 2008He came to be in charge of Xbox via his experience managing their internal studios. How&#x27;s Lionhead doing these days btw?[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Phil_Spencer_(business_executive)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Phil_Spencer_(business_executi...</a>

Congratulations to Phil Spencer, who started out leading an upstart team at Microsoft for a new game console called &quot;Xbox&quot; and is now &quot;CEO of Microsoft Gaming&quot; - a Microsoft Senior Leadership position.Oh, and he now leads the third biggest gaming company on the planet:&gt; When the transaction closes, Microsoft will become the world’s third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony.It will be interesting to see in the medium-term if Satya and the Board spin off gaming into an independent company at some point. But for now it&#x27;s wild to think about the fact that Microsoft owns the Call of Duty franchise.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;activision-blizzard-pushes-out-dozens-of-employees-over-workplace-misconduct-11642428001" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;activision-blizzard-pushes-out-...</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=29966958" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=29966958</a>

That answers the question &quot;could there be enough groundswell to form a blowback,&quot; then :(

It could be that the introduction of a process was part of the deal. That it only affected 20 might be a reason the deal was finalized.

20 employees out of 9500 employees is not significant.You are reading too much from too little.

From the link in the sibling comment:&gt; A summary of those personnel actions was scheduled to be released by Activision before the winter holidays, but Chief Executive Bobby Kotick held it back, telling some people it could make the company’s workplace problems seem bigger than is already known, the people familiar with the situation said.¯\_(ツ)_&#x2F;¯

Suddenly, the reason for the recent employee purge seems more clear. They never fired anybody for bad behavior before, and now, just soon to be aquired, they do.

Microsoft Mahjong has Halo backgrounds, so let&#x27;s get on with the tie-ins.. I&#x27;ll take SC2 Mahjong tiles.

I’m awaiting the inclusion of Diablo and StarCraft as Easter eggs in Excel and the like. Or Warcraft Minesweepers.

IMHO they new and it probably drove the acquisition. Kotick gets to cash-in an insane amount of money and retire in 6 months - 2 years, MS gets the biggest independent game company out there and sends Sony a(nother) message they won&#x27;t forget.

&quot;Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard, and he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture and accelerate business growth.&quot;

Microsoft tries to have an inclusive culture, and generally succeeds far more than their peers. Once Kotick is out I may well end my Blizzard boycott.

I have been boycotting Microsoft since the Halloween documents, and now I have to uninstall Hearthstone from my computer.Joking aside (I got over my Microsoft hatred when they started to finally embrace Linux and FOSS, YMMV (though I was salty about Nokia ditching Maemo!)), I have a deja vu:Microsoft + Elop -&gt; Nokia + Elop -&gt; Nokia + Elop = Microsoft.Microsoft + Ybarra -&gt; Blizzard + Ybarra -&gt; Blizzard + Ibarra = Microsoft.Sure, I don&#x27;t mention Kotick. I don&#x27;t give a shit about Activision&#x27;s IP, so no problem for me there. Its Blizzard&#x27;s IP which I like, or perhaps rather, liked. Cause its gone downhill.. ehh.. &#x27;somewhat&#x27;.

So now I&#x27;m boycotting Microsoft products? What a weird purchase to make. Did they not know this company is the current star of the gaming industry&#x27;s long-standing workplace harassment issues?

If VR&#x2F;AR is believed to be the forefront of the Metaverse than Microsoft is in the best position to do so with Work into HoloLens (AR) + kinect , numerous IP’s to use to build meta worlds, and the capital to burn.What’s left to really show they’re going this direction is to release a VR that works on Xbox.

I don&#x27;t think so. Microsoft development is too entrenched to pull off something that requires so much synergy. Currently I&#x27;d say Fortnite and Roblox are serious metaverse contenders, but one that takes the cake will probably be some new viral product made by fresh blood. Microsoft might buy them, though.

If anyone has a chance at a legit “metaverse experience” it’s a tech giant who develops video games.

There is nothing so bad that it couldn&#x27;t be made worse.

Oh dear more consolidation in the gaming space. Not good for the consumer.

If this type of deal ( vertical consolidation through acquisition of competitors, and then removing those former competitors&#x27; content from competing platforms) isn&#x27;t illegal, antitrust laws need to be adapted so it becomes so. It&#x27;s impossible to deny it&#x27;s purely in detriment to the market, competitors, and consumers.

Why wouldn&#x27;t they be allowed to? Companies acquire smaller companies and competitors all the time, it&#x27;s called consolidation.One party want to sell, the other wants to buy. As long as the deal doesn&#x27;t breach any anti-trust laws, it&#x27;s good to go.

But they span ten or so different industries with a $2T market cap, and it&#x27;s full of unhealthy monopolistic synergies. They can wield this power to force deals and push out competitors across their multiple business units.They can &quot;ask&quot; gaming companies to use Azure if they want to run on Windows or Xbox. They can ignore Mac and PlayStation as platforms. They can bundle software licenses, payment gateways, and design hardware that only works in one ecosystem.This is the modern monopoly. Good luck competing with it or avoiding their platform fees as you try to grow your revenue. You&#x27;ll undoubtably wind up feeding your direct competition somehow or another.

In our legal system, actions are legal unless there is a law making them illegal.If you are referring to anti-trust laws preventing this, then MS would need to be buying a huge number of companies to monopolize the gaming market, not just Activision, in order to be in violation of this law.

I guess since there are so many competitors in the gaming market, the US government doesn&#x27;t care. Not like this acquisition with make Microsoft have a majority share in the entire gaming industry.

Valve&#x2F;Steam would be the biggest competitor on desktop, with nearly 30 million active users.

&gt;&gt;Tencent, Epic,You said Tencent twice ;)

Smaller than Sony or smaller than Playstation? Sony does a lot more than just vidya

&gt; Microsoft’s gaming divisionIsn’t that the point? Why can something as large as MS have a “division” that can go into mergers and acquisitions as if they were a separate entity?&gt; There are stills lots of other large publishers…goes on to name 5.&gt; They are definitely not “buying all their competitSure, you can be as pedantic as you want and jump through hoops to come to that rationalization.

Even after this purchase, Microsoft&#x27;s gaming division is still smaller than Sony by revenue..There are still lots of other large publishers out there.. EA, Take Two, Embracer, Tencent, Epic, etc... I&#x27;m sure I&#x27;m forgetting some big obvious ones even.They are definitely not &quot;buying all their competitors&quot; as you put it.

this will only make them the third largest gaming company

Because the federal government doesn&#x27;t stop them, quite plainly. They fear it would stifle innovation and competition. It&#x27;s the same reason why egregious white collar crimes rarely get punishments. I wish I was making this up.

This deal has to be approved by a lot of regulators before it will go through. AB is a global company. MS thinks it will take at least 12 to 18 month before the deal will happen. Or not, since regulators are a bit iffy with big-tech these days.But overall even though it&#x27;s a big acquisition both together will still remain one amongst a few big gaming companies.

Can somebody please explain to me, why is it allowed for a company like MS to buy all of their (indirect) competitors?

I know there are but I&#x27;ve been doing research on a ton of gov officials (starting a new gig in DC in tech policy) and wow, so many of them are taking a hardline stance on anything &quot;big tech&quot; now, so the political calculus may have changed since previous acquisitions went through.

I doubt it. There are much bigger monopolies in the webspace &#x2F; ecommerce space than the gaming space.

TBF the mood music has changed on mergers and I&#x27;m not sure that would have gone through today.

On the other hand, UK regulators blocked FB&#x2F;Giphy and Nvidia&#x2F;ARM mergers.

Nothing will happen as we live in the post-Disney&#x2F;Fox merger.

Politicians need something meatier than gaming content. I&#x27;d expect google or FB under that lens.

Ironically, I made that some years after a serious libertarian phase and the &quot;Un&quot; is supposed to be the operative part of that as while I am a big fan of individuality, hard work, and limited (albeit ideally very effective) government I very much appreciate now the importance of other parts of society and that life is far more complex than many libertarians (and even myself still) would like it to be and requires a lot of nuance

ahah very appropriate comment given your nickname mention of Atlas Shrugged!

Sure, but sometimes the threat of doing something and having an acquisition mired in a lawsuit or the Prez using the bully pulpit against your co can be a serious deterrent from engaging in an acquisition as well.

Abuse must be proven to break up an existing company. Nobody has to prove abuse to prevent mergers among major market members.

Of course, other countries besides the US could also block the merger...

It&#x27;s not magic but it can block a deal.

You don&#x27;t need Congressional action - the laws never changed, the definition of the courts did. Biden is appointing federal judges faster than even Trump did, so the opinion of the courts may be shifting very quickly.

Anti-Trust is not magic, its no longer a tool politicans can wield like a club against things they don&#x27;t like. The courts have a definition and you actually have to prove abuse for those law-suits to do anything. Doing so if you can do it at all takes decades.Unless politicians make major changes to the anti-trust law its unlikely to be effective. And doing so would require major action in congress.The president could use non anti-trust actions as well of course. But rather unlikely.

Neither Tencent nor Sony are based in the US (although Sony does have a US subsidiary). AT&amp;T and T-Mobile together wouldn&#x27;t have been the whole cell phone market either, although consolidation in physical-presence utilities are seen somewhat differently from more easily distributed products.

the article say Microsoft will be the third largest gaming company behind Tenecent and Sony. how antitrust going to trigger if Microsoft doesn&#x27;t have the entire market. if antitrust didn&#x27;t take down Apple just force Apple to allows third party payment option. i don&#x27;t see how this will trigger antitrust

They always were. Worth noting  the bags are larger now and there are fewer options to hold.

No way. The politicians are also bagholders now.

Seems like the social and commerce aspects are drawing scrutiny.  I think MS will escape unscathed here

If moderate democratic senators could be bought with handouts to toe the party line (anyone remember those times?), perhaps closely examining mergers like this would be a higher priority. There are bills moving through congress though, and eventually with more authority, perhaps the FTC could make meaningful market changes. Like: making MS offer games on other platforms, or at-least not actively stopping them from running by offering good anti-cheat support on all platforms.

I wonder if this will trigger any antitrust lawsuits. I know Microsoft isn&#x27;t that of the 90&#x27;s but it seems like the political situation is ripe for politicians to go after &quot;big tech&quot; and this is a pretty major acquisition that will help Xbox be the dominant player in terms of content.

Overwatch 2 PC&#x2F;Xbox exclusive in 2030??

I think Disney might struggle to buy Microsoft, given that Microsoft has 10x the market cap.

I&#x27;m not a business law type person. Something like, any business with a valuation above, say, $100B (number pulled from ass) should be broken up.

how do you think the laws should be changed to prevent this?

Microsoft is 10x the size of Disney, so more likely they buy Disney than the other way around.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;yuBe93FMiJc?t=239" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;yuBe93FMiJc?t=239</a>

I think if one of the tech giants of the world could create an AGI-ish, they should have no problem becoming a single worldwide monopoly in a couple of years...

We are going for the Cyberpunk future. But instead of Arasaka, Kang Tao, Militech and Biotechnica, we get Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Facebook

These acquisitions are ridiculous. How long till Disney buys Microsoft? Why even bother having more than one company in the US?

If you want them to break up you&#x27;d first need to get the law changed. There are larger game companies still.

They are long overdue for a break-up. I guess the US elite thinks otherwise.

Don&#x27;t get hung up on &quot;monopoly&quot;. Their games are only available on their own vertically integrated platforms. They&#x27;re abusing their dominant market position and should be slapped hard ( full break up and multi billion fines).

This acquisition makes Microsoft the third biggest gaming company in the world... Not even the biggest, and far from a monopoly...

My god I hate monopolies, MS has been on a buying spree and someone needs to stop them, but it will likely never happen.

It&#x27;s an absolute shame Bobby Kotick will continue to function as CEO.

There are so many gaming companies and platforms...  An Anti trust case would be very hard to make.

It does happen, but it&#x27;s pretty rare. One example that comes to mind: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Attempted_purchase_of_T-Mobile_USA_by_AT%26T" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Attempted_purchase_of_T-Mobile...</a>

Nvidia&#x2F;Arm comes to mind as a recent acquisition prevented.

Meta’s (Facebook) acquisition of Giphy got blocked by European regulators iirc.

AT&amp;T&#x27;s acquisition of T-Mobile was aborted due to anti-trust complaints if I recall correctly.The original purchase of Rite Aid by Walgreens was aborted due to similar concerns, although that one ended in a revised partial acquisition anyway.The Staples acquisition of Office Depot&#x2F;Office Max was stopped as well on anti-trust grounds.They also blocked a merger of Nasdaq and NYSE.Those are all since 2010. I&#x27;m sure I&#x27;m forgetting a few big ones too. They should definitely be blocking more, but they have stopped some.

In the EU, Siemens and Alstom weren&#x27;t allowed to merge their train divisions without significant divestment. Same for Daewoo and Hyundai shipbuilding just last week.

Visa&#x2F;Plaid very recently<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.justice.gov&#x2F;opa&#x2F;pr&#x2F;visa-and-plaid-abandon-merger-after-antitrust-division-s-suit-block" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.justice.gov&#x2F;opa&#x2F;pr&#x2F;visa-and-plaid-abandon-merger...</a>

GE Honeywell was a huge one.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rferl.org&#x2F;a&#x2F;1096891.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rferl.org&#x2F;a&#x2F;1096891.html</a>

&gt; I looked around for a while, a d I can&#x27;t actually find a list of any mergers that antitrust regulations actually prevented.A lot has been written about the decline of antitrust enforcement in the US since 1970.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hbr.org&#x2F;2017&#x2F;12&#x2F;the-rise-fall-and-rebirth-of-the-u-s-antitrust-movement" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hbr.org&#x2F;2017&#x2F;12&#x2F;the-rise-fall-and-rebirth-of-the-u-s...</a>

Halliburton &#x2F; Baker Hughes merger was preemptively cancelled due to regulation

I looked around for a while, a d I can&#x27;t actually find a list of any mergers that antitrust regulations actually prevented.I&#x27;m assuming some survivor bias is involved here and we don&#x27;t hear about the ones that stopped early, but it seems that what I and most folks assume antitrust regulations do is different than what actually happens.I remember the Sirius&#x2F;XM merge and how those were the only two players in the market, and it was wild to me how that was allowed to happen.

With these kind of acquisitions, other companies are going to find it very hard to compete with Game Pass.I think we&#x27;ll look back in 10 years and wonder why antitrust regulators did nothing, but it may be too late by then.

Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard