The title is a little misleading. This ruling is only regarding the preliminary injunction. There is still an ongoing suit with the FTC and we will need to wait for that to be resolved. However, knowing how these things go, Microsoft will make a ton of promises about creating jobs, keeping their content available to everyone, and agreeing to play fair. They will get approval and immediately turn around and terminate a ton of jobs, start making things exclusive, and backtrack on their promises. Then…nothing will happen. There will be no repercussions. Rinse and repeat.
Thank the GOP for basically ridding the US of antitrust law, which is now basically no longer a thing.
contemporary democrats are not any better, they make hella frequent concessions to anti-competitive business practices under the guise of licensing or stimulus
This is why US democrats are considered center-right compared to the rest of the world.
And then the moment a union starts getting buck, out come the democrats with the freshly-oiled whips...
True.
The guys who claim capitalism works because a free market will create better things through competition. Guess they weren't so much for the competition stuff and just became puppets for corporations. We also have it completely legal to openly bribe politicians which makes zero fucking sense, except we call it lobbying so it somehow becomes okay.
Capital wins again. If only the FTC didn't sit on its ass for the last 40 years, maybe such market consolidation wouldn't be allowed and normalized.
Also shout-out to this comm. The Beehaw community seems delighted. You can sometimes really tell which instances skew toward leftists vs liberals
The fact that it was challenged at all is a huge step in the right direction. Couple of years ago, the FTC wouldn’t even bat an eye with these mergers. The new chair, Lina Khan seems to be determined to reduce the power of monopolies.
Which is a good thing, if this isn’t obvious.
The problem lies with the complete out of touch judges now.
Oh no, those judged seem touched. Maybe the need another sponsored yaht trip to clear their heads.
If only the FTC didn't sit on its ass for the last 40 years
That's more on the money than you think. Microsoft mostly won because the FTC didn't clamp down on Sony being anticompetitive which "forced" Microsoft to make these acquisitions. This situation is bad, but the alternative with Sony exclusivity deals all over the place was worse.
I might be a little more upset if I could remember the last activision blizzard game I felt was worth playing.
Overwatch 1 the first two years or so was pretty sick. Was definitely one of the most funs I've played. Now it's just skin shop with some maps to dress up in.
You're not excited about Call Of Duty number 24?
You can "rah rah" about exclusivity all day long. What needs to be acknowledged is how huge this is in terms of developers under one company. As far as I can think of, there's never been anything like it. I don't think it's gonna be for the better, I mean this is the same company responsible for this
GFWL was one of the worst attempts to compete with Steam I've ever seen, and also one of the worst software experiences I've ever had. I never got more than an hour into GTA4 because of it and how intolerant of bullshit software I am. Valve should have put their feet down back then and said "no secondary launcher dependencies".
Game pass is OK in terms of value if you play lots of games, but the software it uses is not great, despite being leagues better than GFWL. Windows also sucks, but I'm stuck with it due to work :/
Seems like a foregone conclusion now that this will go through. Unless I’m mistaken, the only speed bump left is the UK CMA appeal in two weeks.
The worst bit is, it seems like the CMA will negotiate with them. This might be well and truly over.
I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t go through. I stand to benefit from the acquisition as a GP subscriber but I’m definitely worried about corporate consolidation. At least Bobby Kotick will go away
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