Microsoft To Acquire Activision Blizzard

[CommunityMember]

The issue is that the CEO is still supposed to stay on.

They often start that way. The question is more whether the CEO (and others in the executive team) will be transitioned to an advisory roll after a year or so, and then will choose to spend more time with their family sometime later (taking their cash and stock options). It is all carefully choreographed in advance with such large acquisitions, although the details are behind various NDA agreements so the rest of us can only see the results far after the completion of the process.

[Alex/AT]

WHAAAAAT?
I'm terribly concerned about WoW future from this point on.

[aufkrawall]

MS games are availiable on steam

For now. They can screw you over any time, it's Microsoft.

[onlyLinuxLuvUBack]

Lets hope this MS's buyout spree is only to combat Tencent and not to form some kind of monopoly. Next gen playstation isn't looking so good, maybe this is why Sony is selling their games on steam.

The Corrupt FTC says software monopolies like EA and NFL are ok. So this should be filed under okay software monopolies if micro$oft delivers the proper # of bags of cash under the table. This is not like nvidia hardware buying a hardware cpu , that is clearly a monopoly and unfair according to Corrupted FTC rules.

[cl333r]

Am I the only one who thinks this will barely change much?

[Alex/AT]

Am I the only one who thinks this will barely change much?

Such acquisitions (and we are talking about one monster acquiring another monster) rarely leave the playground unscathed.

[jaxa]

The issue is that the CEO is still supposed to stay on. The guy who helped cause all of the culture issues at the company. Zero consequences, tons of benefits.


It’s a massive shame.

If they fire Kotick too early he gets to walk away with a lot of money due to his contract. He won't be around for too long.

[middy]

Am I the only one who thinks this will barely change much?

going to get worse. the acceleration of turning women into fruit bowls and removing more emotes like mooning and spitting in WoW will only increase.

[oiaohm]

This was not that surprising considering how much Activision drove Blizzard into the ground. I think that Microsoft will give more freedom to the developers compared to Activision whose whole business model is milking games like call of duty

https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/06/11/e3-2018-heres-what-happened-to-every-studio-microsoft-has-bought

The history of what happens to game companies acquired by Microsoft mostly goes what Microsoft classes as the most valuable games stay alive and everything else get exterminated including possible the complete core company. So less freedom and less jobs. Yes Microsoft business model will include keeping on milking call of duty and the other existing titles with very little going into new Activision Blizzard new titles.

[kescherPh]

69 billion dollar deal to buy up a company that recently got in the news for a major sexual harassment scandal.
Alright then