The US Federal Trade Commission, the FTC, would also pause as it opposes Microsoft’s expansion; instead, they would be willing to renegotiate how the gaming industry would be safe after acquiring Activision Blizzard King.

Bloomberg reported, citing sources familiar with the matter, that the FTC is considering pausing legal action against Microsoft to allow an agreement to be reached. (They did announce a pause.) If the FTC withdraws its lawsuit, the two sides will have a chance to go to the negotiating table, but that would require Microsoft and Activision Blizzard King to get the FTC to do so and could mean an announcement from the FTC that it is withdrawing its lawsuit within days.

The other day, we wrote that Microsoft and Activision Blizzard had moved the deadline for the agreement from July 18 to October 18. Still, they would have to pay $3.5 billion instead of $3.5 billion after August 29 and $4 billion after September 15 as the break-up fee if the merger fails. It is time they need to convince the FTC and the UK competition and markets authority, the CMA, of the acquisition. The CMA has also recently asked for more time to complete its investigation correctly, and they have set a deadline of August 29 at the latest. In that extra time (during which they won’t take the Redmond-based company to court), Microsoft might be able to bribe the inspectors.

Perhaps they can do so in the UK by offloading their cloud business to a third-party company. What other commitments Microsoft will have to make in the US to get the FTC to agree to the $68.7 billion deal is questionable. But it will all come to an end one way or another. There’s a reason why the acquisition is so often talked about is because ZeniMax Media was bought by Microsoft for peanuts by comparison. With the Call of Duty publisher, Phil Spencer and his team would take the most significant expansion in the gaming industry.

Source: VGC