Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#181

Post by skissane » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 12:28 AM UTC

anthk wrote: post #58

Now Zork belongs to MS. Release it under MIT and everyone would win a great history of gaming (and the right to create new histories in the Zorkverse without worrying). Spiritwrak it's a good example. In case of anyone says "text adventures have no future"... the folk lore from a distant past made Disney rich. The Arturian legends plus some samurai touches set into a futuristic space made George Lucas and Lucasfilms…

I think Microsoft might be willing to release the Infocom build tools and engines under an MIT license – by now they would be of purely historical interest, similar to open-sourcing MS-DOS 1.0 and 2.0.

I'm not sure if they'd be willing to do so for the game assets (the room/item descriptions/etc) – it would remove one of the main legal barriers to a competitor creating their own game set in the Zork universe. The Fortran 77 version of Zork has long been available under a "non-commercial use only" license, so they might be willing to release the game assets under such a license too (or maybe a more modern equivalent such as CC-BY-NC or CC-BY-NC-SA)

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#182

Post by justinclift » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 12:29 AM UTC

darknavi wrote: post #2

Microsoft employee here, opinions my own. I work in gaming at Microsoft and I really enjoy it. I think Microsoft gives us a ton of space to explore and make our own impact and I am a huge fan* of Phil Spencer. > Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision has been described as the largest in tech history. It deserves scrutiny. That scrutiny has paid off: Microsoft has committed in writing, in public, and in court to keep C…

Yeah. Looking at past form, after the MS anti-trust agreement in the EU expired (the browser choice one), MS have now gone all-in to force Edge down everyone's throat.

They're clearly "Ok, we have more room to legally get away with XYZ now so LETS GO FOR IT!!!!".

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#183

Post by firebirdn99 » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 12:34 AM UTC

dnissley wrote: post #125

firebirdn99 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FTC is getting involved, because the goal is to make Big Tech smaller not more bigger, and more dominant through acquiring independent studios with major titles, such as they did with $7B Bethesda, and now 65B+ Activision deal. These are huge IPs, that have large amounts of players, and can give a company like MSFT huge control in gaming, and in the metaverse,etc in the future, which is another nascent field. But…

How would players be harmed by an IP changing hands and being made exclusive on a particular platform?

For one, lack of consumer choice. To play those games, I would need to buy an Xbox, whereas for the last 20 years, Call of Duty, etc. has been multiplatform.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#184

Post by firebirdn99 » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 12:35 AM UTC

firebirdn99 wrote: post #109

zamalek wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qualitatively, there are also more harms to the consumer by leaving Actiblizz in the incompetent hands of the current leadership. I still wonder what all of this is worth given that the merger was blocked in the UK.

An independent studio is independent. Just because other countries can be better run by 1 country, doesn't justify acquiring other companies. Many corporations once they acquire a smaller company, skin it for parts, and dissolve it. Like HBO-Discovery recently. The consumer almost always pays, either in terms of choice, or price.

edit: doesn't justify invading other countries

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#185

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 12:41 AM UTC

dnissley wrote: post #125

firebirdn99 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FTC is getting involved, because the goal is to make Big Tech smaller not more bigger, and more dominant through acquiring independent studios with major titles, such as they did with $7B Bethesda, and now 65B+ Activision deal. These are huge IPs, that have large amounts of players, and can give a company like MSFT huge control in gaming, and in the metaverse,etc in the future, which is another nascent field. But…

How would players be harmed by an IP changing hands and being made exclusive on a particular platform?

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#186

Post by collinc777 » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 12:42 AM UTC

Is this hyper-competitive or anti-competetive?

The objective of business is to win, but if a business is too dominant, then they have the ability to extort customers.

I don't see how customer extortion is born out of this. It's fair and in the spirit of a healthy ecosystem.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#187

Post by madeofpalk » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 12:46 AM UTC

tnel77 wrote: post #177

ScoobleDoodle wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Activision / Blizzard / King includes: Candy Crush, World of Warcraft, and Diablo which are all heavy hitters.

I don’t like any of those games, but their sales numbers obviously show that others do haha.

I don’t think US competition law should be based on your personal taste for video games!

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#188

Post by failuser » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 12:49 AM UTC

dnissley wrote: post #122

throwawy1934593 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you get how much money is involved in video games now days The last Call of Duty game crossed a billion dollars in 10 days

Money in itself is not an argument for FTC involvement. E.g. the wedding industry is also enormous, within an order of magnitude of the video game industry in the US.

If weddings were monopolized by General Vowes then it would have been a duty of FTC to look into it.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#189

Post by kevingadd » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 12:50 AM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #67

xxpor wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be incredibly stupid for MS to make CoD an xbox exclusive and completely misses the business case for buying Activision in the first place. Remember, MS is in business to make money , not to win the console wars. Buying the CoD (etc) IP at an inflated price and then immediately cutting off more than half of the revenue would be so mind-boggingly stupid, almost to the point of malpractice. This is why they re…

Non-"here's my theory as to why this would never happen" counterpoint: they bought Bethesda and made Starfield MS platforms-only.

The following is personal opinion based on publicly available figures, IDK how accurate they are.

Skyrim has supposedly sold around 60 million copies over the span of 12 years. Let's be generous and say those sold at an average of $60 each (probably less in practice due to sales, etc.)

That's $3.6b USD in raw revenue. Pretty sick!

On the other hand, as of 2022 (Skyrim numbers are 2023), Call of Duty as a franchise had generated over $31b USD in raw revenue. 10x that of Skyrim, Bethesda's biggest title.

So in terms of scale, I don't see how making Starfield exclusive can possibly be on the same level as the idea of making the whole CoD franchise exclusive. Certainly it would be impactful but I can understand treating them differently.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#190

Post by majormajor » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 12:50 AM UTC

xxpor wrote: post #34

darknavi wrote: post #2

Microsoft employee here, opinions my own. I work in gaming at Microsoft and I really enjoy it. I think Microsoft gives us a ton of space to explore and make our own impact and I am a huge fan* of Phil Spencer. > Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision has been described as the largest in tech history. It deserves scrutiny. That scrutiny has paid off: Microsoft has committed in writing, in public, and in court to keep C…

It would be incredibly stupid for MS to make CoD an xbox exclusive and completely misses the business case for buying Activision in the first place. Remember, MS is in business to make money , not to win the console wars. Buying the CoD (etc) IP at an inflated price and then immediately cutting off more than half of the revenue would be so mind-boggingly stupid, almost to the point of malpractice. This is why they re…

If MS doesn't care about winning the console wars why don't they just stop making Xboxes entirely?

Microsoft's subscription push can't work without winning the console wars since Sony isn't about to let them put GamePass on PS since that kills Sony's revenue model. (That would itself be a very interesting antitrust case.)

So they still want to win the console wars, they just want to monetize that victory differently. But pulling things like Starfield - and eventually COD - off of other platforms is 10000% still aligned with "making as much money as possible."