Microsoft's Activision Blizzard Deal Could "Harm" Gamers, UK Regulator Says

The UK's Competitions and Market Authority shared its provisional findings on Microsoft's proposed Activision Blizzard acquisition this week with more bad news for those hoping the transaction goes through. According to the CMA, Microsoft's potential acquisition of the company "could harm UK gamers" via things like higher prices and fewer options when it comes to buying games. Alongside that early verdict, the CMA has also proposed some possible remedies to the problems it's identified, remedies that include some pretty drastic options including divesting Call of Duty entirely.

The latest on the Activision Blizzard situation was shared in a press release by the CMA that went over its most up-to-date findings. PlayStation and its competition against Xbox was once again a focal topic of the new release with the CMA saying that access to Call of Duty games is a key factor in whether or not this sort of acquisition should be allowed.

"Xbox and PlayStation compete closely with each other at present and access to the most important content, like CoD, is an important part of that competition," the CMA said. "Reducing this competition between Microsoft and Sony could result in all gamers seeing higher prices, reduced range, lower quality, and worse service in gaming consoles over time."

Microsoft previously offered Sony a 10-year contract that would keep Call of Duty games on PlayStation consoles during that timeframe. The CMA pointed out that Microsoft has a history of "buying gaming studios and making their content exclusive to Microsoft's platforms" (that's not exclusive to Microsoft, but it's not untrue either), and the CMA predicts that Microsoft would eventually make Activision's games exclusive to its platforms "or only available on PlayStation under materially worse conditions."

With that in mind, the CMA proposed a few options: Activision Blizzard divests itself of Call of Duty entirely, Activision Blizzard divests itself of the Activision portion or the company, or Activision Blizzard divests itself of the Blizzard portion of the company. The fourth option is that the acquisition doesn't go through at all.

Those are dire options, but this isn't the end of the CMA's investigation, so it's not like Activision Blizzard and Microsoft have to pick one of those anytime soon. These are just provisional findings with a final verdict from the CMA planned for April, though the early perspective from the regulator isn't a promising one for proponents of the acquisition.