FTC Requests Temporary Restraining Order Against Microsoft & Activision Blizzard

Oh boy. Seems like as soon as someone says yes another goes "HOL UP"

End of the month and we should have a much clearer idea of the deals chances. I am pretty sure they will get the temporary order

Love to see it, Lina Khan could only put her thrashing in court off for so long. This will be an annihilation, the FTC has no case, and we can be down to 1 obstinate player left on the board.

This could actually speed it up. It forces a decision vs that clown Lina Khan stalling this out forever.

Isn't this basically helping MS speed it up by putting it to the real courts faster? I'm not sure they're doing what they think they're doing assuming they wanted to stall.... 🤔

As I mentioned in Push Square, I expect this injunction to be granted. There is no point for legal procedures if there is no injunctions. That is one of the reasons they [injunctions] exist for.

There is a minimal chance that the courts might require the FTC go to proper federal court if they want the injunction granted, but I doubt it.

This wont hurt the deal, MS and ABK are very likely already negotiating an extension to their deadline.

@NEStalgia in this one I side with the FTC. Lets assume for a second they genuinely think they have a case, there is no point in litigating the case if you simply allow the merger to happen while you are litigating.

Forcing a split post merger, in the US, is the stuff of ancient history. I don't see the US gov forcing such a thing in my lifetime. Therefore, what happens instead, is that you file an injunction to prevent the action to occur while the case is still pending.

@Tharsman Yes but the injunction has to be granted and that has to hit a real judge first. Either way it will force expediting it.

Well with xbox latest showcase, seems they have more than enough purchased entities to compete

Oh? How exciting. The sooner this hits a real judge, the better. C'mon US gubbernment. Give the FTC that injunction!

@NEStalgia Its rare for them not to be granted, though. It is possible that the judge insists an injunction be conditional to going to actual federal courts, but I doubt it.

Now, should the FTC lose on their internal courts, its possible a second injunction is not awarded.

I can see that this could hurt both the FTC and CMA's chances of getting them to the appeal court. Both organizations know one important thing...

If Microsoft and Activision miss the deadline, they've successfully protected the industry (Playstation) from such a massive merger, and that Activision Blizzard will be able to accept offers from more suitable companies [like Sony].

They're throwing everything they can at ensuring Microsoft can't get the contract processed before the final due date. The sheer level of blocking this one deal is getting is excessive in the extreme, especially since the rest of the world is looking at both organizations and asking one simple thing...

Who Bought You?

@Moonglow Xbox fanboys live on really weird logic 🤣🤣🤣

@NEStalgia pretty sure it just helps MS. I think depending on what the FTC does MS can take it to our very conservative Supreme court. Khan gets burned then.

It's incredible how desperately this clown at FTC and the Sony ex-lawyer at CMA want to protect gamers, I mean, protect Sony's anticompetitive practices. This will backfire and Sony will lose.

FTC and SONY are in bed together

@mousieone Scotus would take forever though, what they want is for it to move fast. They get it either way but speed is the help.

@PushButtons @Banjo- CMA yes, FTC no. They have their own anti big tech political promises to make a show of for the sake of the administration/party. There's has little to do with Sony. They couldn't even use Sonys arguments correctly because they didn't even care to figure out what it was. Their agenda was Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook are they enemy since 2020. Sony was an incidental accessory to that goal.

@Tharsman FTC should give a good reasons for blocking the merger, if they can't......... Well.... We'll be seeing another CMA here.

@Belkan for better or worse, all that is usually needed to get a temporary injunction is have pending litigation on the subject. What I am not certain is if a federal judge will consider FTC internal courts to be "legitimate" pending litigation.

They must have been triggered by that Hexen shirt.

@Banjo- @PushButtons as much as I disagree with the FTC stance, I don’t think it has anything to do with Sony or even gaming.

The current FTC leadership is simply extremely anti-big-tech. They would had opposed the deal even if Microsoft was buying the last Blockbuster store, simply because it’s Microsoft.

The bit I don't understand really is the FTC are still using the console theory of harm, when every other country has rejected it already. Is it because MS have a higher market share in the US?

Personally I don't mind if this deal goes through or not, but everyone in these comments needs to do some research into monopolies and mergers. They generally only benefit the few in the long run.

Understandably in the console war space you want your own team to win. However you also need competition within the industry to keep moving things forward and keep the publishers relatively honest.

If Microsoft go full on gaas and there's no competition, then we will all have to play that way. I would rather MS can the deal and concentrate on its current developers.

@Tharsman @NEStalgia I know, I've read what people posted about them. At the end of the day, they sell false populism, protecting the citizens, the gamers in this case, against the evil digital corporations.

@themcnoisy That's exactly why Sony's anticompetitive practices are worrying, secretly paying for keeping third-party games off Xbox when they have the biggest console userbase. That's illegal in most businesses and a strategy to build a monopoly.

@Kaloudz So, the injunction requires a judge to take part. If he approves it, do we have to wait until the trial is over and Microsoft will have to grant more concessions to get through? If he disapproves it, does it mean that we know that Sony will loose the trial later this year? Are those two the possible outcomes?

I hope the FTC puts as much a stop to this as possible. If not end the merger all together then at least impose restrictions, or make either company have to divest certain divisions.

The consolidation of the gaming industry only benefits the big companies and not the consumer.

@Banjo- They're not even selling that they're protecting the gamers. They're not selling protecting anyone, they're just protecting "the public" from "big tech", there's no further depth to it from there. It really just goes back to a party line campaign promise to crack down on big tech growth. So making a show of cracking down on big tech growth is what they'll do. Doesn't matter if it's Microsoft in gaming, Amazon in grocery, Facebook in dishwashers....just doesn't matter. The political statement was crack down on big tech, the answer is making a show of saying "no" when any of the big techs do anything. Doesn't matter what it is. They probably didn't even read what it is. Docket say Microsoft, answer is no. Didn't need to read further. Very different than the Sony protectionism in the UK. It's purely about making good on an administration/party campaign promise to make good on it, and to make a name in the party for herself.

Here's the thing. I don't even disagree with the whole idea of trying to push back big tech. It's 20-30 years too late, but we have the modern Rockefellers here.... It's actually not a bad agenda at all, and big tech probably does need to be regulated the way telecom was. (Or deregulated except they're not regulated now...)

But first, it still needs to be case by case.....gaming is not the area where MS poses a problem and needs to be looked at, and in this one market they're a solution not a cause of consolidated power in the market. Just because the agenda against big tech is a good thing, doesn't mean it applies across the board to every circumstance. They're following blind idealism rather than pragmatism and looking at how each thing is affected by whom. Even if MS is the enemy, even if MS needs to be broken down, even if that could negatively affect their power in gaming, when looking solely at the gaming market, they're a wedge to break up a different dominating power. If nothing else one has to wield powerful corporations against powerful corporations rather than just spray anti-corporate cover fire and hope the bullets land in the right heads.

Second....the very politicians who claim to have an anti-big-tech agenda certainly don't hesitate to have Google and all their big data power inside their campaign headquarters running their entire election based on big data that "knows basically what you want before you do" going back to Eric Schmidt himself famously at the Obama campaign headquarters dancing to the campaign's robocall message, and the "partnership" with the party continues ever onward, using big data, AI and Google's knowledge of you that exceeds your own to run a political campaign. That doesn't sound very "anti-big-tech" to me.......... More like helping their big tech corporate partners against their big tech corporate enemies as payment.

@Kaloudz Very well explained 👌🏻, thank you 😊

@Banjo- I agree, two wrongs don't make a right.