"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. "

  • LetMeEatCake@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    33
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Kotick gets rewarded by the deal going through. Billions of dollars from the sale. Worst case for him after that is a few hundred million from a golden parachute if he’s fired. We have no real reason to think he will (or won’t, to be clear) be fired though, so there’s a very real chance this is full reward for him: giant piles of money and continues to get to run Activision-Blizzard, just with Microsoft bosses above him.

    The deal going through isn’t something you want if you hate him.

    • Luca@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      26
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      He was filthy rich anyway, a few hundred million more doesn’t make any difference. If the deal gets him out, then that’s still a small win, despite Microsoft owning even more developers

    • Reamen@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      The only reason I’m for the merger is that I know how much Microsoft can affect a corporations executive structure. I would hope they are already planning to replace him already, but either way he won’t last when he gets tossed into MS’ culture.

      At least, that is what I’m hopping.