Recently, Activision Blizzard$Activision Blizzard(ATVI)$released an SEC document to investors, saying that shareholders will attend an online meeting on April 28, 2022, when they will be asked to vote on the Microsoft merger. It is reported that if this vote fails, Microsoft's acquisition of Blizzard is likely to be terminated.
In January 2022, Microsoft$Microsoft(MSFT)$ announced that it would spend US $68.7 billion in cash to acquire Activision Blizzard, becoming the largest acquisition in the game industry. At that time, Microsoft said that the transaction still needed the approval of regulators and Activision Blizzard shareholders, and said that the transaction would be completed in fiscal 2023.
On March 22, the Federal Trade Commission asked Microsoft to provide basic information about the acquisition of Activision Blizzard and will conduct in-depth antitrust review of the acquisition.
It is reported that if the transaction is completed, Microsoft will become the third highest revenue game company in the world, second only to Tencent and Sony. Therefore, in addition to the huge transaction amount, the merger of the two game giants has also attracted attention to antitrust issues.
It is reported that Makan delrahim, the former antitrust director of the US Department of justice, once said that a key issue concerned by antitrust agencies is whether Microsoft's acquisition of Blizzard can better compete with foreign companies such as Sony in Japan in the field of video games.
Microsoft, which is good at Xbox game platform, acquired Activision Blizzard as a game content production company, which will expand its vertical integration ability in the field of game content. As Microsoft CEO Satya NADELLA said, it hopes to increase the circulation of works of small and medium-sized game manufacturers through channels such as xcloud. Meanwhile, due to the merger of Microsoft and blizzard, its continued attraction to users is further enhanced, which may lead to the loss of users of operators with competitive relations in relevant markets in the future.
However, it needs to be further evaluated whether this situation is a benefit brought by normal competitive advantage, or whether it restricts the competition of other countries and operators by excluding, restricting competition or enhancing the locking effect.
In February, Satya NADELLA said in an interview with the media, "Microsoft is still a long way from becoming a monopoly in the game industry.This acquisition only makes Xbox 'become a big player in a highly dispersed field'." However, the statement did not reduce concerns about whether the acquisition case involves monopoly or unfair competition regulation.
At the same time, taking into account the lessons learned from Facebook's acquisition of instagram and WhatsApp successively, in the field of digital economy, the problems of data circulation and cross platform development caused by the acquisition of technology giants are also worthy of attention.
It is worth noting that the market of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard is not limited to the United States. With the support of the characteristics of the global market, Chen Bing believes that the review cycle of the acquisition will be extended due to the review involving other jurisdictions around the world. Earlier, NVIDIA$NVIDIA Corp(NVDA)$'s plan to acquire arm for $40 billion died due to regulatory pressure, and Microsoft and Activision Blizzard may face the same censorship pressure.
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