E.U. Approves Microsoft’s $69 Billion Deal for Activision

▤ Summary

Microsoft’s faltering $69 billion bid to buy the video game company Activision Blizzard received a glimmer of hope on Monday when European Union regulators approved what would be the largest consumer tech deal in two decades. officials said they would allow the deal after Microsoft, the maker of the Xbox console, made concessions to ensure that rival companies would have continued access to games developed by Activision, such as the hugely popular Call of Duty. The European Commission, the executive body for the 27-nation bloc, gave its approval after Microsoft agreed to guarantee that gamers would be able to play Activision titles on cloud gaming services being developed by other companies, such as Nvidia. For years, European antitrust regulators, under Margrethe Vestager, have aggressively gone after big tech companies such as Google, issuing billions of dollars of fines and ordering changes to certain business practices. Now it is the United States taking the tougher position under Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, who has made the challenging of mergers a central part of her plan to rein in the tech giants.

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Microsoft

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