EU Commission Employee Frustrates Xbox Fans With Ill-Advised Call Of Duty Comment

As mentioned previously, the European Commission is embarking on an in-depth investigation of Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and an employee at the Commission drew a lot of unwanted attention on Twitter this week.

Taking to the platform, Ricardo Cardoso (Deputy Head of Unit Interinstitutional & Outreach for DG Grow) stated that the Commission was working to make sure Call of Duty was available on "other consoles (including my PlayStation)".

"The Commission is working to ensure that you will still be able to play Call of Duty on other consoles (including my PlayStation)."

As you can imagine, the "including my PlayStation" bit of this message was referenced by a lot of people in the comments as being a potentially biased take on the situation, which obviously isn't a good look.

The likes of IGN's Ryan McCaffrey and Windows Central's Jez Corden also weighed in on his comments about "ensuring" Call of Duty would remain on other consoles, pointing out that Xbox boss Phil Spencer has been making it very clear recently that the franchise will be staying on PlayStation and potentially even coming to Switch.

Here's what the IGN Executive Editor had to say in response, racking up over 2,000 likes in the process:

"Respectfully, sir, I'm not sure it gets any clearer than the Head of Xbox's public statement on this matter from less than 2 weeks ago. It'll still be on "your" PlayStation, don't worry."

Cardoso is certainly feeling the heat right now on Twitter, but he's responded to the backlash by confirming that he's "not involved in the assessment of the merger" and doesn't actually work in the department involved with mergers:

"To clarify: I am not involved in the assessment of the merger and don't even work in the department dealing with mergers. As is clear from my profile my comments are personal and not a Commission position, whose decision will be taken on the basis of the facts and the law."

Basically, then, this was just an ill-advised comment on Twitter from someone who isn't actually involved in the investigation, so don't take it too seriously! Sounds like an innocent mistake and nothing more...

What are your thoughts on this? Please remember to remain respectful and constructive in the comments.

[source twitter.com, via forbes.com]