Despite the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) unsuccessful appeal in July 2023, Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley has finally denied the FTC’s appeal…

It took nearly two years, but the FTC‘s appeal of Judge Corley‘s decision to block the Activision Blizzard acquisition with a preliminary injunction has ended — and Microsoft has won again. According to Reuters, a three-judge panel from the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco unanimously ruled in Microsoft’s favor. Specifically, they affirmed that the district court applied the correct legal standards when it delivered its judgment in July 2023.

Regarding the console market, the court agreed that the FTC had failed to sufficiently prove that Microsoft would fully or partially shut out competitors by making Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox or by releasing a downgraded version for Sony‘s rival PlayStation platform. As for game library subscription services, the district court did not abuse its discretion in ruling that the FTC had not adequately demonstrated that the merger would significantly lessen competition.

Since Activision Blizzard has historically resisted putting its content on subscription-based services, the fact that such content would be available for the first time through Microsoft’s offerings — even exclusively — does not amount to a substantial reduction in competition. The court also found no grounds to support the FTC’s claim that the merger would hurt competition in the cloud gaming space. The FTC failed to show that Activision Blizzard content would have been accessible in that market absent the merger.

The 2023 decision marked the final legal hurdle allowing Microsoft to complete its $68.7 billion acquisition. Had the ruling gone the other way, the deal could have collapsed. Microsoft was poised to finalize the acquisition officially on October 13, 2023. The FTC’s fears about Call of Duty becoming an Xbox exclusive turned out to be groundless. In fact, Xbox has since leaned heavily into multiplatform distribution, with its catalog appearing on GeForce Now and Boosteroid cloud platforms.

Source: WCCFTech, Reuters, PDF