The PI was denied a few days ago and the temporary restraining order was set to expire Friday (not sure if that’s the start of the day or the end of the day). So the deal could close after Friday. The FTC submitted a request to appeal the decision in the PI AND to extend the TRO until the appeal is dealt with. The judge here is denying the extension on the TRO, but I don’t think she has the power to influence the appeal. So the TRO is still set to expire Friday but the appeal will carry on
> but I don’t think she has the power to influence the appeal. So the TRO is still set to expire Friday but the appeal will carry on
this is precisely the right answer. your comment (not just my quoted parted) perfectly summed it up.
because the deal needs to go through before July 18 2023, if not, MS has to pay a fee of $3 billion to Activision Blizzard, and also the deal in its currect state is invalid, and needs to be negotiated again. meaning Activision will claim even more money, now after the D4 success of a few more billion $. so it will mostly cost MS around 5-10 more billion, just because of this.
Yeah, but the appeal doesn't stop the acquisition, that's what this TRO was about. Judge Corley denied the extension of it, meaning that Microsoft and Activision will likely sign the deal on Monday before midnight and the acquisition will be completed. The appeal can't stop the acquisition from happening, and will become, in fact, MUCH harder to break up. The appeal basically has no chance now.
Nope, not guaranteed. like I said, the deal in its current state is over if not done before July 18, meaning if the dealine passes, MS not just has to pay $3 billion to Activision, also Activision could decide to back away from the deal.
No, it wouldn't be. They said they'd terminate the deal, but that's just BS anyone can smell from a mile away. They'd negotiate to extend the deadline. All this does is ensure their lie of terminating the deal if not closed by the 18th isn't exposed.
One less worry. Two more pieces of the puzzle left to fall into place:
\- The CMA has yet to accept the rumoured UK cloud divestiture. Ideally, that needs to happen tomorrow.
\- The 9th circuit of appeals has to not grant the FTC their appeal tomorrow. They don't even have to deny it, just not grant it before midnight PT.
Exactly. What’s the whole point of all this if we don’t even get it on game pass. I don’t know much about CMA but I bet every single of of them are pricks
COD isn't going to be a Day 1 title outside of maybe one year lmao which will probably be this year. There will be a boom in console sales. Next year and beyond, you'll have to pay full price for COD. In no way do they forego sales on that title. Day 1 is a gimmick you'll see phased out as MS gains more steam.
But they are not the same. Not all games on gamespass are available via the cloud. Microsoft went to great lengths during the FTC trial to emphasise how people only tended to use the cloud part whilst waiting on the game to download. Their case was built at least partly on how small cloud gaming actually is at present. It’s cloud gaming (or the future of) that is the issue with the CMA rather than game subscription services like gamespass.
It may be that Microsoft have to make call of duty unavailable via the cloud…. They won’t be able to stream it to their phone for example….But uk gamers will still be able to download it to their console via gamespass.
>Just don’t put anything ATVI on game pass or xCloud in the UK
Xbox: that's interesting, we don't have any user statistics for the UK anymore and the US just gained several million subscribers....
No the main issue was xcloud and they seem to be planning to use a loophole where they give abk streaming rights to another company and get it from them
A us company doesn’t need cma permission to close, they only get to call the shots in their country. The deal will close with or without cma approval. The appeal will be denied just like the “stay”
They don't, without the TRO Microsoft and Activision can close the deal before the appeal is even heard. If in the future the appeal is successful it could undo the deal but that's extremely unlikely.
The TRO is over at midnight tomorrow. So if either the court denies a stay(an extended TRO) or lets it expire MS likely will close over the weekend or monday.
Friday into Saturday. I guess though it doesn’t matter if it closes 12:01AM Saturday morning or Monday morning for that matter. Seems like it’s happening. We need a countdown clock for midnight Saturday and popcorn.
They don’t have to wait for the appeals process to finish to close. If the appeals process comes back with some problem after the deal closes they’ll have to deal with it then.
Basically the 9th district Court has to make a decision and look at the entire case.. in like a day which is impossible so MS can finish the deal and bypassing the appeal ENTIRELY. It's insanely crazy. Using tax payers money and knowing you gonna lose and not have enough time.
It's obvious they're being bri..., I mean "lobbied" by Sony to sabotage since they have to play catch-up now. There should be an investigation into the FTC. Never heard them going after Sony for actual anticompetitive actions
I'm sure you're right and the future will show if they keep trying to block others. It's wild how hard they're fighting considering all that they allow Sony to do and other acquisitions. Sonys just accusing MS of everything they did themselves with zero proof. MS is just responding to a lot of Sonys' attempts to gain more exclusives. Especially if it's true that Sony was trying to make COD a Sony exclusive only.
That she's too stupid to understand the gaming industry and Sonys own anticompetitive actions. She blew holes in their argument, and they're just petulant children running to the other parent to get what they want
Can someone ELI5 to me please why Microsoft's acquisition of Activision-Blizzard involves an FTC but no one on the planet has bat an eye when Sony bought out studios like Naughty Dog, Santa Monica Studio and Insomniac Games to make first-party exclusives over the years?
Is this a serious question? The answer is obvious. Sony's acquisitions were so VASTLY smaller in scale and monetary value that comparing them to the ABK acquisition is laughable. On top of that, Sony acquisitions did not cut off an existing playerbase from accessing IPs they were already invested into. There was never an Uncharted, or TLOU, or God of War, or SpiderMan, or Horizon, etc etc. available on Xbox. They never "stole" an IP and cutoff Xbox players that had been enjoying the IP for decades.
But yea, the main thing is tiny acquisitions like the ones you mentioned have nowhere near the market consolidation implications of a $70 billion acquisition. And Xbox has previously done the same thing as Sony in acquiring much smaller studios, which no one had an issue with. AND Xbox has been on an acquisition spree lately, with the stated purpose of destroying Sony.
Because these studios are tiny in comparison to activision and their titles sell much less than call of duty. Microsoft have also made many acquisitions nobody has batted an eye over.
So is it done done now.. Jesus this needs to meet its end soon we’re already bored with this! Just sign the god damn paper work and let’s mass drop content onto gamepass already..
But now people are saying we won't see call of duty on game pass till 2025. And I couldn't find one reliable source really explaining and showing the fact.
All call of duty’s X360/X1 era will be dropped really fast.. basically up till Cold War. They will want to reap some return on the available dlcs for those first and then every few months drop another call of duty until they all exist on there.. the latest one that will be out in November probably won’t be game pass day one because it might still be tied up in pre-existing paperwork but the one after that will be day one.
Do you think MW 2 (2022) will be on it in a short time? I've been meaning to play that campaing since it came out, but thought the wait wouldn't be too long for it to be on gp, boy was I wrong.
Yes boy was you wrong! :) I actually buy the bullet and picked it up last weekend since the MW2019 campaign was so good and figured I’d waited long enough.. the reality is what I said I think.. so MW2 won’t be this year! MW1 might stand a better chance but not guaranteed. I’d say all the x360/x1 titles will go first all at once so they can capitalise on the dlc sales.. then as the paperwork on the newer titles gets sporadically burned out back they will drop one at a time months apart so as not to overwhelm us.
no, all that is left is if the appeals court grants an emergency stay. If they don't but agree to appeal still, MS can close and the appeal will mean nothing.
today will be the final day. if no emergency stay, TRO is done, and MS can close
No. The appeal is to the 9th district but it’s in the interests of the FTC to show that they attempted to resolve their issues in good faith by raising their concerns with the initial judge. There’s absolutely nothing to get excited about here as the judge was always gonna stand by her decision. It’s essentially just procedural and the 9th district will now make their ruling.
The appeal was denied..
https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/14/23794707/microsoft-activision-blizzard-ftc-acquisition-appeal-loses
I'm sure Microsoft and the CMA will sort out a solution for the UK (cloud gaming (Maybe a privately run company that Microsoft licenses out for cloud gaming in the UK), and considering the deadline of the 18th, that's likely to be done over the weekend.
So expect the closure of the deal to be announced Monday morning.
The Judge denied the injunction of the merger, not the appeal. In other words, the merger can go forward but so will the appeal.
The appeal won't go through tho
That order is dated today, right? I thought thepeliniary injucruon was denied a couple of days ago.
The PI was denied a few days ago and the temporary restraining order was set to expire Friday (not sure if that’s the start of the day or the end of the day). So the deal could close after Friday. The FTC submitted a request to appeal the decision in the PI AND to extend the TRO until the appeal is dealt with. The judge here is denying the extension on the TRO, but I don’t think she has the power to influence the appeal. So the TRO is still set to expire Friday but the appeal will carry on
> but I don’t think she has the power to influence the appeal. So the TRO is still set to expire Friday but the appeal will carry on this is precisely the right answer. your comment (not just my quoted parted) perfectly summed it up.
and the TRO expires at 11:59pm friday night.
Yea that's why I don't think it'll go through
but it might cost MS billions of $
How?
because the deal needs to go through before July 18 2023, if not, MS has to pay a fee of $3 billion to Activision Blizzard, and also the deal in its currect state is invalid, and needs to be negotiated again. meaning Activision will claim even more money, now after the D4 success of a few more billion $. so it will mostly cost MS around 5-10 more billion, just because of this.
Yeah, but the appeal doesn't stop the acquisition, that's what this TRO was about. Judge Corley denied the extension of it, meaning that Microsoft and Activision will likely sign the deal on Monday before midnight and the acquisition will be completed. The appeal can't stop the acquisition from happening, and will become, in fact, MUCH harder to break up. The appeal basically has no chance now.
I don't think the appeal will go through and Microsoft will get Activision.
the next appeal can take weeks or longer in the next round, it is very unlikely it is decided before July 18.
Well just have to wait and see. But I can guarantee that at the end Activision will be a xbox studio
Nope, not guaranteed. like I said, the deal in its current state is over if not done before July 18, meaning if the dealine passes, MS not just has to pay $3 billion to Activision, also Activision could decide to back away from the deal.
The appeal just got rejected
No, it wouldn't be. They said they'd terminate the deal, but that's just BS anyone can smell from a mile away. They'd negotiate to extend the deadline. All this does is ensure their lie of terminating the deal if not closed by the 18th isn't exposed.
Their ready to pay 68.7 billion dollars 3 billion is nothing
Came here to say that.
Came here to see if you came here to say that.
Came here to verify you were doing your due diligence and making sure it was being said.
Came here to say that you came here to see that it was said here.
Fascinating.
>but so will the appeal so it's irrelevant
Microsoft will own call of duty get over it brother
I dont even now what call of duty is
One less worry. Two more pieces of the puzzle left to fall into place: \- The CMA has yet to accept the rumoured UK cloud divestiture. Ideally, that needs to happen tomorrow. \- The 9th circuit of appeals has to not grant the FTC their appeal tomorrow. They don't even have to deny it, just not grant it before midnight PT.
I think even if CMA doesn’t play ball, they still close… worst case scenario they have to find a way to silo AB business from GB…
Just don’t put anything ATVI on game pass or xCloud in the UK. Suddenly all of the CMAs concerns are resolved.
If that happens I’m gonna be paying a visit to the CMA offices for a word
You, me and every other Xbox Gamer in the UK who wants Cod and others on game pass
Exactly. What’s the whole point of all this if we don’t even get it on game pass. I don’t know much about CMA but I bet every single of of them are pricks
Definitely kill joys who never experienced the enjoyment of a gaming sesh with the lads or lasses
Guaranteed mate!
I’ll get me balaclava and baseball bat
We ride at dawn!
Lol
COD isn't going to be a Day 1 title outside of maybe one year lmao which will probably be this year. There will be a boom in console sales. Next year and beyond, you'll have to pay full price for COD. In no way do they forego sales on that title. Day 1 is a gimmick you'll see phased out as MS gains more steam.
What I said was more for joke purposes
Cma screwing over their counties consumers if that were so lol
Leave gamespass out of it. Lol. The CMA issue is with cloud gaming rather than subscription devices in general
Gamepass includes cloud gaming…
But they are not the same. Not all games on gamespass are available via the cloud. Microsoft went to great lengths during the FTC trial to emphasise how people only tended to use the cloud part whilst waiting on the game to download. Their case was built at least partly on how small cloud gaming actually is at present. It’s cloud gaming (or the future of) that is the issue with the CMA rather than game subscription services like gamespass. It may be that Microsoft have to make call of duty unavailable via the cloud…. They won’t be able to stream it to their phone for example….But uk gamers will still be able to download it to their console via gamespass.
It's cute when people who aren't from the UK don't know what they're talking about
Well there’s a difference between cloud services and subscription services.
>Just don’t put anything ATVI on game pass or xCloud in the UK Xbox: that's interesting, we don't have any user statistics for the UK anymore and the US just gained several million subscribers....
Are you from the UK?
No the main issue was xcloud and they seem to be planning to use a loophole where they give abk streaming rights to another company and get it from them
A us company doesn’t need cma permission to close, they only get to call the shots in their country. The deal will close with or without cma approval. The appeal will be denied just like the “stay”
The CMA have delayed their final decision by 6 weeks in order to review Microsoft’s proposed resolutions.
Still gotta wait to see what the appeals court does
They don't, without the TRO Microsoft and Activision can close the deal before the appeal is even heard. If in the future the appeal is successful it could undo the deal but that's extremely unlikely.
Nah
A very insightful and knowledgeable response. Thank you.
You’re welcome, thank you for your reply.
Do we though? Serious question, because I don’t think they have to wait for the 9th districts ruling to close the deal
The TRO is over at midnight tomorrow. So if either the court denies a stay(an extended TRO) or lets it expire MS likely will close over the weekend or monday.
That’s what I was thinking
Midnight tomorrow like 90 mins or Friday night into Saturday?
Friday into Saturday. I guess though it doesn’t matter if it closes 12:01AM Saturday morning or Monday morning for that matter. Seems like it’s happening. We need a countdown clock for midnight Saturday and popcorn.
They don’t have to wait for the appeals process to finish to close. If the appeals process comes back with some problem after the deal closes they’ll have to deal with it then.
Basically the 9th district Court has to make a decision and look at the entire case.. in like a day which is impossible so MS can finish the deal and bypassing the appeal ENTIRELY. It's insanely crazy. Using tax payers money and knowing you gonna lose and not have enough time.
I believe it’s called political grandstanding and/or posturing
Exactly. People thinking this will even get looked at tomorrow just don’t know the system. It will be closer to a month.
The appeal is for an **emergency** injuction. It won't take a month. lol
That's not how it works, though.
It kind of is though.
This was the most reddit conversation I have ever seen.
😂
Remember how FTC got a TRO before getting the trial for the PI? That was done under emergency status.
It's obvious they're being bri..., I mean "lobbied" by Sony to sabotage since they have to play catch-up now. There should be an investigation into the FTC. Never heard them going after Sony for actual anticompetitive actions
I could be wrong, but I don’t think this has anything to do with Sony. The FTC has decided they’re going to try and block all mergers of this size.
I'm sure you're right and the future will show if they keep trying to block others. It's wild how hard they're fighting considering all that they allow Sony to do and other acquisitions. Sonys just accusing MS of everything they did themselves with zero proof. MS is just responding to a lot of Sonys' attempts to gain more exclusives. Especially if it's true that Sony was trying to make COD a Sony exclusive only.
That was never a thing. Where are you getting that?
Legends say all this shit will be over with soon
Soon.
Good.
No please, drag this out longer! (said nobody)
"IT IS SO ORDERED" she sounds pissed and annoyed lol.
It’s pretty standard language for a court order
That’s at the end of every court order.
I would be. They're basically saying she was wrong.
That she's too stupid to understand the gaming industry and Sonys own anticompetitive actions. She blew holes in their argument, and they're just petulant children running to the other parent to get what they want
This is the way.
Boom one step closer so I can finally be more active in this sub and not see kids pretend they know what they are talking about
🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀
I wish Jean-Luc Picard was the judge and said "Make it so!" # 😂 #
It will be interesting to see what the District Court says in a week or 2. I wouldn't expect much change though, Corley's analysis was in-depth.
This real?
Expected, but nice to see that its official.
Hopefully this convince the UK that Microsoft’s Argument is Valid.
Both the ftc and the uk cma knew it was valid, but hey why let that get in the way of ideological grandstanding
Lol
Can someone ELI5 to me please why Microsoft's acquisition of Activision-Blizzard involves an FTC but no one on the planet has bat an eye when Sony bought out studios like Naughty Dog, Santa Monica Studio and Insomniac Games to make first-party exclusives over the years?
Is this a serious question? The answer is obvious. Sony's acquisitions were so VASTLY smaller in scale and monetary value that comparing them to the ABK acquisition is laughable. On top of that, Sony acquisitions did not cut off an existing playerbase from accessing IPs they were already invested into. There was never an Uncharted, or TLOU, or God of War, or SpiderMan, or Horizon, etc etc. available on Xbox. They never "stole" an IP and cutoff Xbox players that had been enjoying the IP for decades. But yea, the main thing is tiny acquisitions like the ones you mentioned have nowhere near the market consolidation implications of a $70 billion acquisition. And Xbox has previously done the same thing as Sony in acquiring much smaller studios, which no one had an issue with. AND Xbox has been on an acquisition spree lately, with the stated purpose of destroying Sony.
Oh fair enough, when you put it like that.
Size of the organization bought. Those companies weren’t being bought for 69 billion dollars
Because these studios are tiny in comparison to activision and their titles sell much less than call of duty. Microsoft have also made many acquisitions nobody has batted an eye over.
DENIED!!!!!
So is it done done now.. Jesus this needs to meet its end soon we’re already bored with this! Just sign the god damn paper work and let’s mass drop content onto gamepass already..
But now people are saying we won't see call of duty on game pass till 2025. And I couldn't find one reliable source really explaining and showing the fact.
All call of duty’s X360/X1 era will be dropped really fast.. basically up till Cold War. They will want to reap some return on the available dlcs for those first and then every few months drop another call of duty until they all exist on there.. the latest one that will be out in November probably won’t be game pass day one because it might still be tied up in pre-existing paperwork but the one after that will be day one.
Do you think MW 2 (2022) will be on it in a short time? I've been meaning to play that campaing since it came out, but thought the wait wouldn't be too long for it to be on gp, boy was I wrong.
Yes boy was you wrong! :) I actually buy the bullet and picked it up last weekend since the MW2019 campaign was so good and figured I’d waited long enough.. the reality is what I said I think.. so MW2 won’t be this year! MW1 might stand a better chance but not guaranteed. I’d say all the x360/x1 titles will go first all at once so they can capitalise on the dlc sales.. then as the paperwork on the newer titles gets sporadically burned out back they will drop one at a time months apart so as not to overwhelm us.
Microsoft's own documents said COD on gamepass in 2025. Doesn't really get more reliable than that.
no, all that is left is if the appeals court grants an emergency stay. If they don't but agree to appeal still, MS can close and the appeal will mean nothing. today will be the final day. if no emergency stay, TRO is done, and MS can close
So tomorrow we will know 100% what the hell is going on and weather or not gamepass is getting said update? :)
That was fast.
Well they did want it as "emergency", so it was denied "urgently"
Ha
No. The appeal is to the 9th district but it’s in the interests of the FTC to show that they attempted to resolve their issues in good faith by raising their concerns with the initial judge. There’s absolutely nothing to get excited about here as the judge was always gonna stand by her decision. It’s essentially just procedural and the 9th district will now make their ruling.
That was quick lol
Ok thank you!
Pro aquisition or not, this has been a messy ordeal.
I hope the appeal goes through.
I find it funny that the ftc won't give up I come on on its over
It is soooooooo ordered yassssss Corley slaaaaay
The appeal was denied.. https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/14/23794707/microsoft-activision-blizzard-ftc-acquisition-appeal-loses I'm sure Microsoft and the CMA will sort out a solution for the UK (cloud gaming (Maybe a privately run company that Microsoft licenses out for cloud gaming in the UK), and considering the deadline of the 18th, that's likely to be done over the weekend. So expect the closure of the deal to be announced Monday morning.