The railroad mergers in particular. CPKC as a perfect example, and now CN is trying to acquire another railroad. Railroads used to be hundreds of different companies, now it's five large corporations and a few tiny struggling small railroads. And those small railroads almost always end up being bought by Genessee & Wyoming, a holding company that homogenizes them under one banner. Deregulating and privatizing the railroads was a horrible mistake.

See, normally I would agree with you, but Activision/Blizzard was so uniquely terrible that it literally cannot get worse.

I think of it this way. I never have to spend money on another one of those shitty games in my life.

Call of Duty has been truly ass well before these new hot steaming piles.

The serious gamer market isn’t the target audience for CoD. They’re aiming for kids and the adults who play 20 minutes a day and call it good. The game is perfectly fine for those players. Anyone who wants to play at anything more than a couch casual level isn’t the audience the game is made for. Do I think they’re terrible games? Yes, but that doesn’t mean they’re not filling the exact market niche they’re aiming for.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if it has more to do with "if we hold this one up, what does it say about all these other mergers that we let through that are more egregious?"

I can’t believe anyone would approve it to begin with…

The main reason it didn't face as much resistance is how far behind Sony (and IMO Nintendo) Microsoft is in this console generation. And the merger was still really close to not happening at all despite there being no chance that it turns MS into anything resembling a monopoly.

And since AB isn't really a platform in the same way Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo are it's not as though it's directly reducing competition in that market.

And blocking the merger also benefits the market leader in the space.

And MS is a US company, while Sony isn't (which matters in the context of the FTC).

Maybe…lol

The FTC is also opposing the kroger/albertsons merger, healthcare office mergers under private equity, along with sueing google and and amazon, and more.

They literally are currently opposing mergers in all of the above and trying to break up current monopolies.

It doesn't matter if it's essential or not. Microsoft literally already got smacked for monopoly issues 20 years ago without being essential.

Officially one of biggest concerns was with the cloud gaming market monopoly as they could have all of Activision titles on Game Pass so Microsoft conceded that thier Activision cloud game rights would be given to Ubisoft.

$

A. The U.S. relented. The UK was never a massive player in this deal, they were just one of the first to loudly dissent. While the U.S. was blocking the deal, they were able to easily point to the FTC and sit on their hands. They caved pretty soon after.

B. Microsoft made some promises. Ubisoft is going to get game streaming rights, which means if Microsoft wants to make any of their games available on Game Pass, Ubisoft has to agree and Microsoft will have to pay Ubi for the privilege.

Microsoft was willing to leave the UK market as its not big enough compared to the value the aquisition would be valued.

The UK argued for Microsofts cloud gaming dominamce. To appease thr CMA, microsoft gave ubisoft all streaming rights to act/blizz games for like a ridiculously long timr.

It's an appeal