The Federal Trade Commission has filed an antitrust lawsuit over the Activision Blizzard takeover deal, centered around the issue of Call of Duty exclusivity. In a statement, US officials indicated that the company had already lied to regulators in the past – the Xbox manufacturer allegedly assured the European Commission that Bethesda’s productions would be available on all devices.
The truth, however, looks quite different, because it turns out that The Europeans did not expect such assurances. The European Commission reacted to the FTC statement by emphasizing that the Redmond giant was not forced to make any concessions as the transaction did not raise concerns:
The Commission unconditionally approved the Microsoft/ZeniMax transaction as it concluded that the transaction did not raise competition concerns. Microsoft has not presented any commitments to the Commission, says the European Commission (for Seeking Alpha).
In the process of the earlier takeover, Microsoft did not offer any concessions, and officials did not require them:
“The conclusion that there are no competition concerns was not based on any statements from Microsoft regarding the future distribution strategy of ZeniMax games.”
When taking over Bethesda, Microsoft emphasized in its official statements that the exclusivity of subsequent games will be considered individually – although some productions may still debut on all devices, some titles will only be available on Xbox and PC. The producer basically did not hide that he took over teams responsible for series such as Fallout to provide exclusive content for Game Pass.
Why is the FTC based on false arguments? It seems quite likely that any of the submissions submitted contained a misstatement and officials failed to check it. Regulators from the European Union, however, reacted by pointing out that the indicated case never took place.
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