the judge has decided to deny the FTC’s preliminary injunction request. In a ruling submitted today, Judge Corley said the following:
“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 Call of Duty on PlayStation for 10 years on parity with Xbox. It made an agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Switch. And it entered several agreements to for the first time bring Activision’s content to several cloud gaming services. This Court’s responsibility in this case is narrow. It is to decide if, notwithstanding these current circumstances, the merger should be halted—perhaps even terminated—pending resolution of the FTC administrative action. For the reasons explained, the Court finds the FTC has not shown a likelihood it will prevail on its claim this particular vertical merger in this specific industry may substantially lessen competition. To the contrary, the record evidence points to more consumer access to Call of Duty and other Activision content. The motion for a preliminary injunction is therefore DENIED.”
Playing devil’s advocate, even though MSFT failed to ship good quality games consistently* (ignoring Flight Simulator 2020, Forza Horizon 5, Age of Empires 4), they haven’t become a toxic place to work at with acquisations of sexual assualt, rampant crunch culture or rejecting unionisation. The idea that happy employees create good games hasn’t yet been proven given how Xbox has been very loosey goosey with quality control, but we can say that they do let studios be themselves (for e.g. Pentiment and Grounded probably wouldn’t have seen light if Obsidian was acquired by metacritic chasing publisher). Naughty Dog produces finest games, but there are multiple reports of crunch and overwork. Bend Studio really wanted a Days Gone 2 but it didn’t work out. Of course there will be all sorts of examples, good and bad, but so far MSFT has at least good work culture and low pressure enviornment going for them.
Speaking of pressure, despite poor performance of Redfall, Xbox hasn’t closed Arkane Austin, and only after so many misses did MSFT reorg 343i.
So yeah, poor sales performance but happy and safe employees is a better place to be in than great sales performance but overworked, underpaid and terrified employees. If Xbox can figure out a way to improve quality of shipped products, that would be best of both worlds.
*Psychonauts 2, Deathloop, Doom Eternal, HiFi Rush don’t count, even though they were great games, as they were in active development before the purchase. Likewise, Redfall should also not be fully Xbox’s responsibility given it was conceptualized and built by a Bethesda hungry for MTX and live service. Let’s hope it was the last time they okay such a game.
Some truth here. Game dev is almost alway a shitty work environment. Creative work has been hard to find unless going into indie.