European Commission Likely to Object to Microsoft-Activision Blizzard Acquisition | MMORPG.com

Comments

• giantessfan Member UncommonPosts: 185

  January 2023

  Just objections. Microsoft will make concessions they have said as much. They want this to go through.
  
  Worst comes to worst they go to court and we keep hearing about till 2025-2026
• MrdGamez Member UncommonPosts: 58

  January 2023

  In the end the deal will go true 100%, some people in high ranks will get same extra cash on the side and will approve the deal. No matter how bad it seems to be, we all know it will be done. It is just a matter of time.

  
• Scot Member LegendaryPosts: 24,273

  January 2023 edited January 2023

  In my experience the EU Commission objects to business being part of our societies, so this is hardly a surprise.

  Post edited by Scot on January 2023

  
• Vrika Member LegendaryPosts: 7,973

  January 2023 edited January 2023

  MrdGamez said:

  In the end the deal will go true 100%, some people in high ranks will get same extra cash on the side and will approve the deal. No matter how bad it seems to be, we all know it will be done. It is just a matter of time.

  NVidia - ARM deal failed costing NVidia $1.25 billion advance payment they had made to ARM's owner.
  
  So no, just because we're dealing with a huge deal it doesn't mean the company would bribe it through the system.

   
• achesoma Member RarePosts: 1,768

  January 2023

  So monopolies on food, fuel, energy, medicine and pretty much anything else is fine but video games are a step too far. Somewhere there's a Drake meme for this.
  

  
  
• DEXA88 Member UncommonPosts: 175

  January 2023

  Nothing runs mmo into a ground tlike Microsoft does !
• BrotherMaynard Member RarePosts: 647

  January 2023 edited January 2023

  achesoma said:

  So monopolies on food, fuel, energy, medicine and pretty much anything else is fine but video games are a step too far. Somewhere there's a Drake meme for this.
  

  
  If there is such a meme somewhere, I suspect it's mostly in your head. Where did you get that nonsense that monopolies (including in gaming) are fine? The fact that some industries cannot support more than a few operators does not mean monopolies are ok. Gaming is not even close to being such industry and it's utterly ridiculous trying to compare it to energy or food industry.
  
  Monopolies on health: depends on which type of pharmaceutics you're talking about. For perhaps 90% of medicines there is no monopoly. I'm sure you yourself can think of 5-10 huge pharma companies on the global market, plus many regional or local ones making generic drugs. 
  
  I know that in the US there have been some companies who managed to monopolise a specific drug and then basically extort the people needing it, but that is on the local regulators who allowed it to happen. Other than that you have highly specialised (and usually exorbitantly expensive) medicines that only a couple of companies globally can make. There's not much you can do there - it's not like you can force others to suddenly discover the same formula or to nationalise and distribute the drug yourself (history shows such foolishness never works).
  
  As for energy, that is hardly surprising and that's also why most countries have some form of specialised regulatory body just for energy companies. Those industries have enormous barriers to entry simply due to the costs and required infrastructure to extract, generate, process and transport energy; not to mention the fact that countries generally sell license to exploit resources (e.g. natural gas) in a certain area and you usually have only one company per area with such license. There are only so many nuclear power stations or oil refineries a certain area can support or private operators are willing to finance (especially seeing their potential profits rapidly drop with increased number of such infrastructures).
  
  Monopolies on food?! Where on Earth do you live? North Korea?