Recap of the results
EU findings:
- EU thinks that to make the AB titles console exclusive wouldn't significantly harm the consoles and game subscriptions markets and that MS isn't incentivized to do it
- PS outsells XB 4:1 (wtf!) in the European Economic Area (EEA)
- CoD is less important in the EEA than in other regions (NA/USA), Sony could replace it with other games thanks to their huge catalog and position
- Even without this acquisition ABK wouldn't have included their game in the rival subscriptions because game subs canibalize their main revenue source, game and dlc sales
- They think cloud gaming today is "very limited market" but has potential to grow and be transformative in the future. They think ABK games could help to make it popular but that to do it exclusively in GP would harm this market, and in the specific case of PC, MS could limit it to their OS so it would also harm the PC OS market.
Remedies proposed by MS to address the European Commision concerns in cloud gaming in a 10 years commitment to provide:
- A free license to consumers in the EEA that would allow them to stream, via any cloud game streaming services of their choice, all current and future Activision Blizzard PC and console games for which they have a license.
- A corresponding free license to cloud game streaming service providers to allow EEA-based gamers to stream any Activision Blizzard's PC and console games.
- These licenses will ensure that gamers that have purchased one or more Activision games on a PC or console store, or that have subscribed to a multi-game subscription service that includes Activision games, have the right to stream those games with any cloud game streaming service of their choice and play them on any device using any operating system.
- Activision's games available for streaming will have the same quality and content as games available for traditional download.
- After getting feeback from 'a large number of market participants' the Commision sees this as positive because think it would help cloud gaming market including relaetd small clould gaming services from EU.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_2705
Personal opinion:
I think the Comission made a big mistake ignoring that (at least what they said in UK, I assume same applies for the EU) that instead of paying to these cloud gaming platform holders the typical 30% revenue made by selling in these platforms the Activision Blizzard games and their DLC/IAP/passes, MS wouldn't pay them nothing.
These platforms would have to pay the server costs for these games that would be providing them no revenue at all producing them loses, while also keeping their players busy instead of playing other games of their platform that provide them revenue. So that deal would damage them and would be abusive and unfair, to the point I personally think is a reason to block the acquisition.
In any case, getting the ok from the EU doesn't matter because the FTC and CMA already killed the acquisition, instead of MS gets very lucky and they win in the appeals for both decisions, where they have very low chances.