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On the day Microsoft announces nearly $70 billion acquisition of ActivLizzard, US government launches overhaul of merger approval process


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And the Senate will take on antitrust enforcement this week.

 

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On Tuesday, the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission launched a joint effort to modernize antitrust enforcement, seeking comment on how the agencies can apply current law in cases against tech companies like Meta (parent company of Facebook) and Google.

 

The announcement came at a joint press conference from FTC Chair Lina Khan and Justice Department Antitrust Chief Jonathan Kanter, who described the move as a wide-ranging enforcement modernization effort. While the announcement spans markets, it specifically questions how regulators should approach merger approval in digital markets, potentially setting new legal standards around data aggregation, interoperability, and market consolidation that can affect competition.

 

 

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I did notice that one of the first things said in the announcement video was that even after the merger MS would still only be the third largest video game company, after Tencent and Sony. I'm sure that was aimed at regulators.

 

Hopefully this new FTC can change the way we think about anti-trust in this country, though I won't hold my breath.

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While I do expect to see this FTC be a bit more bullish on anti-trust, I also don't expect them to stop the MS deal. Yeah, Activision/Blizzard does have their own launcher/storefront, but they're not really competitive with MS in that way. The games industry will still be left with a bunch of competition at various sizes, and it's unlikely this has any real impact on consumer pricing.

 

The most that I can imagine is the FTC putting some kind of limited conditions on the sale, forcing MS to continue publishing on other platforms for a time, but even that seems unlikely.

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