2023-05-15 15:44:39
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The EU Commission has approved the planned takeover of the video game company Activision Blizzard by the technology giant Microsoft subject to conditions.
Microsoft has offered two ways for users to keep access to Activision Blizzard games even following the takeover, the commission announced on Monday in Brussels.
On the one hand, players in the EU countries as well as Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein should get a free license for ten years, which allows them to play current and future games from Activision Blizzard via a cloud gaming service of their choice. The prerequisite is that they already have a gaming license. Cloud gaming providers should also receive a license so that users can play all Activision Blizzard PC and console games.
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“The commitments fully address the competition concerns raised by the Commission,” the Commission’s statement said. The competition authorities also emphasized that there are incentives for Microsoft to offer Activision games for Sony’s Playstation, since the competitor’s console achieves four times the sales of its own Xbox.
But the takeover is not yet done. In Great Britain, the supervisory authority CMA blocked the takeover in April. She fears a distortion of competition and that Microsoft’s competitive advantage, especially in the cloud gaming sector, will increase too much as a result of the merger of the companies. There is also resistance to the project in the United States.
Microsoft wants to buy the Blizzard games group for 68.7 billion US dollars (around 63.2 billion euros). In addition to “Call of Duty”, Activision Blizzard also includes titles such as “Overwatch”, “World of Warcraft”, “Starcraft” and “Hearthstone”. Competition watchdogs have reservations regarding the takeover, fearing that users’ access to games might be restricted.
On the NASDAQ stock exchange, Microsoft shares temporarily rose 0.09 percent to $309.24, while Activision shares also gained 1.05 percent to $78.18 in places.
BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX)
Image Credit: Pavel Kapysh / Shutterstock.com, Eric Broder Van Dyke / Shutterstock, Activision Blizzard
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