Microsoft/Activision OK Is ‘Independent Basis’ for 9th Circuit ‘Affirmance’: Microsoft

Friday’s decision of the U.K.’s Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) granting final approval of Microsoft’s $69 billion Activision Blizzard buy, enabling the transaction to close, “provides an independent basis” for the 9th U.S. Appeals Court’s “affirmance” of the merger, wrote Wilkinson Stekloff partner Rakesh Kilaru, counsel for Microsoft, to the 9th Circuit clerk in a letter Friday (docket 23-15992). The CMA’s decision provides an independent basis for affirmance, said Kilaru. Activision, before the closing, agreed to divest global cloud streaming rights to all existing console and PC games, and those produced over the next 15 years, to Ubisoft, he said. Microsoft “accordingly does not own or control cloud-gaming rights for any Activision titles “streamed in the U.S. and other global jurisdictions," he said. Microsoft also agreed not to interfere with Ubisoft’s cloud streaming rights, and to give Ubisoft versions of Activision games that are on par with the non-streaming versions of those games, he said. The CMA’s decision further says Microsoft’s preexisting commitments to regulators and third parties “remain intact,” he said: “Taken together, these actions eliminate any possible claim that Microsoft will withhold Activision content from rivals in the alleged cloud streaming market.”