Update as of May 13: According to a report published by Reuters, The Federal Trade Commission in the US has asked a court to temporarily block Microsoft Corp's acquisition of Activision Blizzard before 11:59 p.m ET June 15. The regulator says that the deal would give Microsoft the ability to degrade Activision's content quality and in doing so could substantially lessen competition. On May 15, the European Commission approved the acquisition of Activision Blizzard (Activision) by Microsoft. This approval is conditional and depends upon Microsoft’s commitments to fully address the competition concerns identified by the commission and to represent a significant improvement for cloud gaming. It was in January 2022 when Microsoft announced that it wants to acquire Activision Blizzard for a record $68.7 billion. For the acquisition to go through, Microsoft needs the approval of regulatory bodies in the US, the UK, and the EU. So far, the UK regulator has blocked the acquisition, to which Microsoft has filed an appeal, and the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed a lawsuit against the deal, which will not be decided upon till the end of the year, according to a report by the BBC. What is cloud gaming: Cloud gaming is a kind of online gaming where the games are run on remote servers and streamed to the user rather than running on the local hardware of the user. Why it matters: While the UK regulator’s judgment expressed concern about the acquisition’s anti-competitive effects on the cloud gaming industry,…
