The U.S. Federal Trade Commission previously filed several appeals against Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and last year, the Federal Trade Commission filed an appeal against Microsoft's announcement of layoffs.thinkIt violated its original promise to acquire Activision Blizzard and then appealed again against Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, but the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Microsoft.The previous court ruling remains, determining that Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard did not violate antitrust laws.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit pointed out that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission could not prove that Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard would affect other brands of game consoles from obtaining popular games such as "Call of Duty." It also did not accept the FTC's view that Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard would affect competition in the game subscription service and cloud streaming market.
Judge Daniel P. Collins said that the major players in the market are actually taking similar acquisition approaches to expand their own competitive advantages in game content, and Microsoft has also continued to use its original platform exclusive games toPorting to other brand game consoles, so we do not believe that Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard will affect market competition.
Prior to this, Microsoft explained to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that the acquisition of Activision Blizzard was a vertical integration and therefore would not involve layoffs. However, after the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, due to business overlap, Microsoft laid off business members including Xbox, Activision Blizzard and ZeniMax, resulting in layoffs affecting the jobs of about 1900 people.
