Federal Trade Commission Seeks To Block Microsoft Acquisition Of Activision Blizzard

deadline.com:

An increasingly aggressive Federal Trade Commission will sue to block a proposed $69 billion merger between Microsoft and leading video game developer Activision Blizzard announced early this year.

It said the deal would hand the tech giant and Xbox maker too much control of top videogame franchises, “enabling it to harm competition in high-performance gaming consoles and subscription services by denying or degrading rivals’ access to its popular content.” The acquisition of the company behind Call of Duty — which would be Microsoft’s largest ever deal as well as the biggest ever in the video gaming industry — “would enable Microsoft to suppress competitors to its Xbox gaming consoles and its rapidly growing subscription content and cloud-gaming business,” the FTC said in its complaint issued Thursday.

The agency, newly emboldened under chair Lina Khan and with an expanded vision of its antitrust mandate, has become increasingly front of mind as companies consider deals.

It recently, and successfully, sued to block Paramount Global’s $2.2 billion sale of Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House.