Last year it was announced that Microsoft was purchasing Activision-Blizzard for nearly $70B. This was the latest in a series of high-profile acquisitions made by the company that started in the late-2010s, but it was the biggest ever attempted. This news drew the concern of many and begged one very serious question, which is whether Microsoft's acquisition of Activision-Blizzard would give Xbox too much power.
Microsoft's spending spree took off in 2018 when the company bought up several studios such as Ninja Theory, Undead Labs, Playground Games, and Obsidian Entertainment. Concerns didn't really begin to ramp up until 2020 when Microsoft acquired Bethesda and its parent company ZeniMax Media Inc. for $7.5B. Problems started to arise, however, when the company announced its intentions to acquire Activision-Blizzard.
Opposition to Microsoft's Acquisition of Activision-Blizzard
Since the purchase was announced various organizations have attempted to stop it. The EU's antitrust body is expected to object to the merger and the FTC is suing Microsoft to keep it from acquiring Activision-Blizzard. This has since sparked a PR controversy where Microsoft has gone so far as to accuse the FTC of violating the United States Constitution. The company would later admit that this was a mistake.
Currently, the purchase is still pending and there is no way to know how the FTC's lawsuit will go. Xbox head Phil Spencer is confident about the acquisition and thinks the purchase will go through, and the company appears to be committed to allowing Call of Duty titles on PlayStation consoles for some time. This, however, once again begs whether the Activision-Blizzard acquisition gives Xbox and Microsoft too much power, and the short answer to this is yes.
What Microsoft Owning Activision-Blizzard Could Mean For Workers
The first issue that comes into play is the employment availability for potential developers. There are only so many major studios a game maker can work for, and Microsoft's Activision Blizzard purchase would narrow those options down even further. By many accounts, Activision-Blizzard's internal culture has warranted lawsuits against the studio, making it not the most ideal place to work. Yet, having the two remain separate entities gives potential workers an option to go between two individual companies. If the acquisition were to go through it would give Microsoft a larger amount of control over its employees and could very well make salary negotiations, benefits, and rights all the more difficult.
Furthermore, such a purchase would put more employees at the mercy of the company's whims and decision-making. Earlier this month it was revealed that Microsoft laid off over 10,000 employees. Both Halo developer 343 Industries and Fallout/Elder Scrolls studio Bethesda were hit by these layoffs, though the extent to which they were affected is unknown. If ZeniMax Media Inc. was still its own company, the people at Bethesda wouldn't have to worry about this situation at all. While Activision-Blizzard is infamous for its sudden layoffs, the employees of the company were spared this precisely because they're currently not under the Microsoft umbrella.
What Microsoft's Purchase of Activision-Blizzard Could Mean for Consumers
Microsoft already holds a lot of power over the gaming industry, and in 2022 it was the second-largest video game company, having brought in over $16B through gaming revenue. At the moment, however, the company comes off as something of a benevolent titan and effectively created gaming's answer to Netflix with Xbox Game Pass. This subscription service gives players access to a vast library of games for only $9.99 a month. The rising costs of games and the prospect of Activision Blizzard's library being added would make it all the better by making the acquisition seem like a great outcome for consumers.
If the purchase were to go through, many of Activision Blizzard's games would likely come to the subscription service. Due to current contractual obligations, it will take a while for Call of Duty to be available for Game Pass, but eventually, it will find its way there. Either way, the service will likely see a larger influx of subscribers who want that deal for their favorite Activision Blizzard franchises. At that point, there wouldn't be a way to stop the company from raising Game Pass prices to whatever it wants, and that $9.99 price could end up as $19.99 or even $29.99.
As such, it's worth noting that Microsoft was ultimately responsible for raising Xbox's game prices from the long-standing $59.99 to $69.99. This in turn made Game Pass look like a much better deal. While this may not have been an end goal for Microsoft, the industry on the whole does have a long-standing reputation for avaricious behavior, such as with loot boxes and microtransactions. This is only kept in check by competition and scrutiny from consumers, and taking away a big portion of that competition could likely give Xbox too much power that it may abuse.