This will never happen...

There's no precedent in the US for going to that granular level when it comes to monopolies. It would be like looking at the market for green coloured SUVs with a sunroof and saying "there's only one company that makes this". I just can't see them caring.

Now, if Microsoft hoovered up Valve, Sony, Epic and Nintendo then you could argue that would be monopolistic as they would effectively control all the main game distribution channels. Or if they bought every game developer in the world and refused to allow anyone else to develop video games. But a few big games in a single genre? I can't see the US Government or EU caring

And that folks, is the way S̶p̶y̶w̶a̶r̶e̶ (Oopsy!) Telemetry (TM) + your customers doing the beta tester work can produce 70B to acquire Activision-Blizzard.

I wouldn't be surprised if cdp ends up bought by some giant tech some years from now, tbh.

These last 3 to 4 years have been insane. i don't remember so many acquisitions within the gaming industry.

We were used to some companies buying a studio here and there, but now we have Embracer, well embracing like a maniac, you have Tecent putting their hands on everything as well, and Microsoft just bought 2 big publishers in the span of little more than a year.

It's wild out there and I guess "no one's safe".

Yes, it's single-player only.

This is done to try to make it look like they are preventing piracy and make sure gamers buy the game for $50-70. Why else? It's DRM being DRM; protecting the game to make sure they get sales or make it look like they are getting that, of course.

Things get more tricky if there's some files only server-side, Saves Cloud-side, and/or stuff of that sort. Probably would be a pain for hackers to reverse-engineer, to work offline.

Gamers are used to this treatment as they have all of these shiny features in their client-app on PC or on their console - Achievements, Online Co-Op/MP (if supported), Cloud Saves, etc etc.

Gamers often can't wait - and just buy stuff ASAP at $60-70. A lot of us here on GOG might not be of that club, but a majority of gamers do buy stuff on Pre-Order, Day 1, Week 1, or not too long after.

Dev's and pub's seem to be training gamers for the inevitable streaming-only gaming take-over, whenever that horrible inevitably comes.

That really seems like too much money to me. Like ten times the Bethesda deal for a bunch of brands that are arguably fading from the spotlight and teams that are shadows of what they once were? Seems like banking a lot on CoD remaining dominant and Diablo 4 bringing people back. I'm not an analyst though, wtf do I know.

This doesn't effect me directly much, I don't even have Battle.net installed. Industry wise though it's an earthquake I suppose. They also announced GamePass has 25 million subscribers, so we're definitely headed toward the Netflix model for the gaming industry, for better or worse (worse).

o.O Hot damn!

Hopefully, Microsoft will be able to restructure that company to excise the rotten part of ActiBliz's corporate culture. Definitely hoping shit-stains like Kotick will be gone for good after the acquisition.

B/c of Season Passes, Expansion Packs, DLC's, Games released unoptimized/broken/unstable/etc, Games needs Patches to fix it, modders might need to fix a game. $50-70 Day 1 gamers are treated often like paying Beta Testers, etc etc - yeah, I don't often buy Day 1.

I've learned from buying games like say Morrowind, Oblivion, Gothic series, Witcher 1 - 3, and others early - so yeah, I'm almost done w/ that. I'll often just wait a bit at least, these days.

I often pounce once deep discounts hit, unless it's something I'm really dying to play - which is often rare, these days and age.

I even waited 'til Cyberpunk 2077 PC version hit $20 or below, before purchasing - and pounced once it was that price at GameStop.

This is a very big thing. Some say, Microsoft will be the 3rd biggest player in that field after Tencent and Sony.

Anyway, we will have to wait and see... different antitrust regulators first have to give green light to this aquisition, so that it can actually happen.

The world's gone crazy. Using the short scale definition of billion everywhere? Outrageous.

On the topic at hand, paying 68.7K million for Arcanum's IP seems quite fair to me.

Dopitche :O

We can get an idea of what Activision-Blizzard for games and/or IP's that they owns, distributes, and/or holds licenses to...given what they are selling.

GOG - Games published by Acti-Blizz over there:
Page 1 - https://www.gog.com/games?publishers=activision
Page 2 - https://www.gog.com/games?publishers=activision&page=2

Steam - Games published by Acti-Blizz over there - https://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=Activision

Epic Store: Tony Hawk 1 + 2 Remaster/Remake -> https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/p/tony-hawks-pro-skater-1-and-2

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Blizzard IP's - Diablo, Overwatch, Warcraft and World of Warcraft & StarCraft.

Activision IP's - Singularity; Call of Duty; Tony Hawk; Prototype; Arcanum; Zork; Gabriel Knight; King's Quest; Space Quest; Quest for Glory series; Police Quest series; Crash Bandicoot; Krondor franchise; GUN; Spyro.

Stuff they don't own, but may hold licenses and/or distribution to - Star Trek (license); Vampire The Masquerade Redemption & Bloodlines (distribution rights owned for those games, as the IP is now owned by Paradox for making new games).

When I first saw the news I was in shock. That's quite a purchase! I don't think it's a good or bad thing though. One big player takes over another big player. Probably we'll see Activision Blizzard games in Game Pass (which is a video game renting service). Apart from that I don't expect any meaningful changes. Probably the corporations will be kept as separate entities which work on their own. Generally I don't view Microsoft as a big villain in the gaming industry. I don't like their attitude towards DRM, but the studios they acquire remain quite independent in what they do. There are worse options than being bought by Microsoft imho.

Microsoft buying game studios is like christian wake before the funeral.

This will be goldmine of fun jokes for years to come.