Microsoft to acquire Activision Blizzard

I have my doubts, but I do hope this acquisition tries to fix some of the culture at Activision-Blizzard, from all of the reports of mass layoffs and underpaid workers, it does not sound like a pleasant place to work.

Transactions like $68.7 billion dollars to buy companies??? If even a small fraction of that went back to the open-souce projects that these corporations rely upon, what a world we would live in.


Last edited by metalinux on 19 Jan 2022 at 4:15 am UTC

I hope that Microsofta recent move to opensource will open up blizzards games for native Linux versions and an open source version of battle. net

But I guess the main thing is better working conditions for all employees and that we still get the same great games over our old channels without steam and the ms store.
Funding is save now :)

If it means that Heretic II and Hexen II: Portal of Pravus finally gets put on Steam and GOG, then I call it a good thing on my book (though I still hate Microsoft)

Regardless of the current company policy: Monopoly=Bad because policies can be changed by the blink of an eye. And if everything is owned by one company, nobody is left to challend then on their shitty behaviour.

I do hate this.

But what did Microsoft spend this buttload of money on? Maybe 5 franchises, some of them on their last legs. King is probably worth more to them than Blizzard in the long run.

I do hate this.

But what did Microsoft spend this buttload of money on? Maybe 5 franchises, some of them on their last legs.

I guess we'll find out whether they have enough extra to buy some spare legs.

I do hate this.

But what did Microsoft spend this buttload of money on? Maybe 5 franchises, some of them on their last legs.

I guess we'll find out whether they have enough extra to buy some spare legs.

They need to sort out the workers issue first. I hope someone has reached out to some of them to see how they feel about all this.

Am feeling disappointed by this..

When all the gaming legends of the 80s and 90s are either no more, or are all owned by two or three companies worldwide, it will be a sad day.

Hopefully there is still room for established names to publish on the indie scene. :)

Microsoft shows Epic how to act against Steam.

I am sure they have a long term strategy. The time will come, when the MS owned games will be Windows/XBOX exclusive.

I am worried, that Gaben has just missed the point to also own a few important franchises/Studios, to compete. If you only have the plattform, you are fucked in the long term. At least when there is a content owner, who owns a majority of content and has big infrastructure/customer base like Windows.

It's weird seeing so many think this is a good pattern and praising MS for being gamer friendly lately. Does no one else see these grabs as a great lock-in? Give it a little time, buy another beloved studio or three, then start the MS store exclusivity. With no other possibility from any of those shell publishers anymore, it will be a forced success - what Epic tried but with the capital to pull it off. And then, it could even be a simple swap to UWP and game over WINE/Proton.

Seriously.

Within recent years; inXile, Obsidian, Bethesda. Now Activision/Blizzard.

Still laughing that so many journalists are rounding off to 70 Billion... ignoring the 1.3 Billion dollar difference between 70 and 68.7...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbVb63qPDQ8

Well they are not wrong. That it happens to be 68.7bn is just a side effect of Microsoft having to buy ActivisionBlizzard of the stock market, had they dealt with a single owner then it would have been 70bn and people like nice round numbers.

Some comments have been removed due to rule violations. This is not a place to suddenly have a rant about "socialism". Stop it.

Next up Ubisoft?

Nah. Microsoft is highly opportunistic with its aquisitions. Unless it explodes in its hands -some angry Activision shareholders being able to fight this- this is obiously them getting Activision at discount price thanks to the recent exploits of the Bobby Kotick charming persona. Culture aside, Activision is a money printing machine.

They might not do good games (in the good old Blizzard sense of it), but they do games that sell a lot to the masses. Hadn't this abusive stuff exploded we would be here reading again how Bobby announces record profits, appoints himself a crazy performance bonus, how he thanks his eployees for their desperate crunches that made for another year of financial success and then fires them in mass to squeeze a little more profit now that development is not needed anymore.

Recent history showed people want to use Steam as they consider it the superior storefront.
Would Microsoft force their own store upon gamers, it would reinforce Valve's commitment in Linux even further.
As for UWP, even Windows gamers don't want it.
That's just my view on the subject though, only time will tell.

All in all, my reaction to this comes down to,
Short term: Meh. Whatever.
Long term: Fear of monopolistic shenanigans

At first I was shocked but a second later, I don't care. Haven't played any of their games the last couple of years. Indies amaze me much more atm.

But I still hope Microsoft continues publishing Games to Steam.

At first I was shocked but a second later, I don't care. Haven't played any of their games the last couple of years. Indies amaze me much more atm.

For me we should be happy. Activision had no budget for games with less than a 10 billion revenues potential. Bobby wanted to absorb Blizzard to save his dieing company... but for wow, not the rest.

With Activision there would be no hope to get a new Diablo or Starcraft. Not without some shit attached for the boardroom schemes (remember d3 awful drops and real money ah? Or SC2 being only playable in multiplayer in competitive ladder with no custom games support? Both games then were fixed in the expansions and became what they were meant to be since the beginning, but having failed at launch they never reached the success they deserved).

Microsoft at least has the capacity and will to fund niche projects. Look at aoe4. A new RTS in the age of F2P, microtransactions, ntf and mobile?

After today I believe we could get a Diablo 4 or Starcraft 3 that are good games. Ok. Just maybe on Steam, probably not Linux. But better that way that never have them.


Last edited by Mal on 19 Jan 2022 at 6:56 pm UTC

Next up Ubisoft?

Nah. Microsoft is highly opportunistic with its aquisitions. Unless it explodes in its hands -some angry Activision shareholders being able to fight this- this is obiously them getting Activision at discount price thanks to the recent exploits of the Bobby Kotick charming persona. Culture aside, Activision is a money printing machine.

ubisoft fought pretty hard recently to avoid being bought out by the French conglomerate Vivendi ([link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubisoft#Attempted_takeover_by_Vivendi_(2015%E2%80%932018)) -- ironically, to 'maintain their independence'. 'Ironic', because they're at the vanguard of most of the 'industry's nonsense (from microtransactions, to 'live services', to even 'nfts' nowadays) entirely willingly anyway.

Next up Ubisoft?

Nah. Microsoft is highly opportunistic with its aquisitions. Unless it explodes in its hands -some angry Activision shareholders being able to fight this- this is obiously them getting Activision at discount price thanks to the recent exploits of the Bobby Kotick charming persona. Culture aside, Activision is a money printing machine.

ubisoft fought pretty hard recently to avoid being bought out by the French conglomerate Vivendi ([link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubisoft#Attempted_takeover_by_Vivendi_(2015%E2%80%932018)) -- ironically, to 'maintain their independence'. 'Ironic', because they're at the vanguard of most of the 'industry's nonsense (from microtransactions, to 'live services', to even 'nfts' nowadays) entirely willingly anyway.

I didn't mean that Microsoft wouldn't be interested. I just say that usually Microsoft (founded by a businessman, with the culture of a businessman, with business in mind) it's very good at recognizing good deals and quick to go to action before the opportunity window closes. When they bought Mojang they did it to avoid having to pay taxes on those 2 billions (so, it effectively costed them a fraction fo that price). Now they buy Activision for a fraction of its (true) price (way less then share value before the scandal. But the scandal is temporary and the IPs, sales and game success are still there. sure they will have to fork out some hundred million to fix the Bobby scandal, but they save dollars in the billion order on the purchase price).

Sure they might buy Ubisoft in the future. Why not. But my personal idea is that they are way slower when it's about buying stuff for the "right" price.

At first I was shocked but a second later, I don't care. Haven't played any of their games the last couple of years. Indies amaze me much more atm.

For me we should be happy. Activision had no budget for games with less than a 10 billion revenues potential. Bobby wanted to absorb Blizzard to save his dieing company... but for wow, not the rest.

You know that Blizzard is not even close to the revenue of King owned by Activision? They aquired Blizzard to milk their games with micro transactions, since the player base was big.

But Activision was nowhere close to die. They did not need Blizzard, they wanted it for revenues sake.

But I think Microsoft as a platform owner has a lot more interest in long term customer binding than Activision ever had due to the need to create short term profits for shareholders.

So I think this could actually help the games under the banner of Activision/Blizzard, while all the microtransactions will stay, the focus will change from short term profit and especially "engagement" to long term sustainability.

Mocrosoft does not care if you play something else, as long as you are on the game pass service and pay.

And Microsoft certainly has the infrastructure to make it even more cost effective to run servers. They do not need to rent datacenters or backbones - they own them.

They have a history of attractive workplace and adequate payment.

All that will help if it gets through to the actual staff employed, and they'd be able to hire and keep talents.

Indies amaze me much more atm.

Long term: Fear of monopolistic shenanigans

For the mainstream player and for discoverability, monopolization may be a long term concern. For now, though, there are too many big players involved to end with a Disneyization of gaming. It'll likely be more like the streaming wars, with 5-8 different players....

I'm not worried about the Indies either. First, the big guys will need some new IP to buy once they run their "independent" studios into the ground (which they seem to have a strong history of doing), so the successful indies will get their big paydays. Also, while there may be mainstream monopolization, indies will always be able to make their own launchers and sell direct over the internet, and gamers have a history of going where the great games are no matter what. So I'm not worried....