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Microsoft United Kingdom

Microsoft Hits Back at UK After Activision Acquisition Blocked (reuters.com) 75

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Microsoft's president Brad Smith said the UK regulator's decision to prevent its acquisition of 'Call of Duty' maker Activision Blizzard "had shaken confidence" in Britain as a destination for tech businesses. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which operates independently from government, blocked the deal on Wednesday, saying it could hit competition in the nascent cloud gaming market. Microsoft hit back on Thursday, saying it was "probably the darkest day in our four decades in Britain" and sent the wrong message to the global tech industry about the UK.

"If the government of the United Kingdom wants to bring in investment, if it wants to create jobs (...) it needs to look hard at the role of the CMA, the regulatory structure in the United Kingdom, this transaction, and the message that the United Kingdom has just said to the world," he told BBC radio. "We continue to believe that the UK has an extremely attractive tech sector and a growing games market," he said. "We will continue to engage proactively with Microsoft and other companies."
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Microsoft Hits Back at UK After Activision Acquisition Blocked More

Microsoft Hits Back at UK After Activision Acquisition Blocked

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  • Threats like these are a really bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Thursday April 27, 2023 @11:11AM (#63480754)

    Such statements make a criminal mind-set obvious. They may well make the EU regulators look at this deal again, because they make it clear sometheing is really rotten in there.

    • I'm not a Linux fan, I find it awkward and often convoluted compared to Windows, but also feel that is greatly due to the monopoly MS still have. It's about the somebody pushed back against these practices, be it this merger, artificial limits in software licensing, digital downloads tied to consoles with no chance of ownership, or any number of the other anti-consumer practices that exist at large in today's industry. Mandating that PCs / Laptops / Phones are not locked down and are sold with Open oper

      • 100%

        Was told to install some crappy Microsoft app to enable Windows TFA on my own mobile natch I refused. Was then told it was a requirement, again refused. said If they want to provide a phone upon which to install this crap they're free to do so. The haven't as yet.

    • Have mega mergers ever resulted in benefits to the consumer?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Not with corporations. But it has with the EU.
      • I don't even think they're of interest to the companies involved. Look at how most of these mega mergers (AOL/Time-Warner, HP/Compaq, etc.) have turned out for the companies involved. But what private companies want to do with their own businesses aren't much business of mine unless I own stock. Microsoft shareholders should be thanking the UK for stopping them from wasting tens of billions of dollars.

        • Yeah, you know what? Fuck microsoft's shareholders. And fuck Brad Smith, fuck Phil Spencer, and fuck Bobby Kotick too. They've all chosen to be part of the problem, not part of any solution. But as someone who has enjoied Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo in the past, would like to be able to so do in the future, would have liked to be able to play Starfield and future Fallout games, and who will never EVER enrich microsoft with thirty pieces of filthy lucure for an xbox; *I* sure as hell thank the UK for

      • Maybe Sprint / T-Mobile. Sprint was on the verge of bankruptcy, so that didn't reduce competition below what it would have been anyway. And it made T-Mobile a more viable competitor compared to the other two, which was of benefit.

        I expect that most mergers which are actually beneficial are going to look like that. The Bear Stearns / JP Morgan merger is another example, or the recent Credit Suisse / UBS. Though bank mergers are a little different.
    • Then again, the EU also isn't too happy with the UK for raising its drawbridge against the global economy and reclaiming its status as an isolated little island.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        It's more than just that they withdrew from the EU, it's all the bad faith negotiation. Anyone who wasn't unhappy with the UK wasn't involved in that process. (I wasn't, but I'd still be reluctant to trust anything a UK government official said or promised. Even in a signed contract.)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Indeed. I guess when the UK comes crawling back (and they will), they will not only not get their former favorable conditions back, they will have to accept special restrictions. The negotiators and cretin politicians directing them did so much crap, it is absolutely incredible. Explains nicely why those responsible can still not admit why Brexit was a really bad idea: They cannot ever fully fix their mistake now.

    • Re:Threats like these are a really bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday April 27, 2023 @02:04PM (#63481360)

      Such statements make a criminal mind-set obvious. They may well make the EU regulators look at this deal again

      There's nothing criminal or threatening about the statement. It's like you don't have a clue how a PR campaign works, or how much most governments don't give a flying fuck. The EU won't do anything, and certainly won't consider what Microsoft said. Sunak fired back with his own Bad Words (tm) today. Life moved on as if nothing happened.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Seriously? You are going to claim _that_?

        • I'm not claiming anything. I'm stating the obvious fact. ${Government} does something ${company} doesn't like. ${Company} comes out and say they are saddened by the decision and it reflects poorly on ${Government} and its continued competitiveness in the global market.

          This is literally situation normal. It would be the result of ChatGPT saying something if ChatGPT was trained only on company PR responses. Is this the first time you've ever seen a PR response from a company?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Usually it is worded very careful and in the way you describe. This time it is pretty much an open threat. That is unusual and remarkably stupid.

      • "Nice country and economy you got there. Be a shame if someone were to come along and muss it up now wouldn't it? Not to worry though. Let me do what I want and uh I'll see to it that none of my guys come to see you. As friends of course, this totally isn't a threat. " - totally not a mob tactic, nope!

        Yeah ok. You got a bridge that you'll throw in on that? Give me a break.

        • Nice country and economy you got there. Be a shame if someone were to come along and muss it up now wouldn't it?

          Not at all what was said. Try "It's a nice country you got, it's a shame that you seem to be ruining it yourself. I wonder if other people will invest in it in the future."

          Microsoft is not making threats because *and this is the important bit* Microsoft has zero power to do anything. Microsoft won't do anything because they can't do anything. It's a pure PR marketing game.

          Give me a break.

          Until you learn to read you should give us all a break.

    • Rotten in Redmond you mean? We all knew that.

  • sorry that your plan to swallow another company and push msft products on it to grow market share via acquisition isn't playing out the way you want. that hurts competition and stomping your feet won't fix that. nice try though!

  • 4 decades (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ubi_NL ( 313657 ) <joris.benschopNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday April 27, 2023 @11:16AM (#63480780) Journal

    was "probably the darkest day in our four decades in Britain"

    Would that include the Lockerbie crash, the IRA attacks,or covid just to name a few, or is somebody being a little self-obsessed here?

    • Re:4 decades (Score:4, Insightful)

      by WoodstockJeff ( 568111 ) on Thursday April 27, 2023 @11:34AM (#63480832) Homepage

      Would that include the Lockerbie crash, the IRA attacks,or covid just to name a few, or is somebody being a little self-obsessed here?

      When speaking about yourself, it's quite usual to take yourself into account.You might even say, being "self-obsessed" is part of that.

      Microsoft didn't take part in Lockerbie, most likely didn't take part in IRA attacks, and COVID has been a general problem for everyone (but not a "dark day"). None of these affected Microsoft by itself.

  • to encourage a diverse market. The CMA needs to help make a market with many competing suppliers - that is what is good for consumers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MBC1977 ( 978793 )
      In some (not all), takeovers a mutual agreements. Activision may not want to sell to a smaller firm for various financial reasons (i.e. not offered enough money).

  • According to TFS, the president of Microsoft says that "We will continue to engage proactively with Microsoft". Is this supposed to be coherent?

    • According to TFS, the president of Microsoft says that "We will continue to engage proactively with Microsoft". Is this supposed to be coherent?

      The /. Editors must have gotten a tainted batch of "good times" from their Oakland supplier /s

  • The entire question is if Microsoft only wants Activision so they can overwhelm and lockout the market. Nothing Microsoft has done, has instilled any trust or shown any grounds they won't. Their entire argument has broken down to:

    "You either leave me alone in a candy and toy store, and let me play with and eat what ever I want, or you're bad parents, and I won't share the candy."

    1. No one needed or wanted the candy.
    2. You're not 3, you're 40 and could make your own candy.
    3. Every time you've been a
    • Almost all mergers and acquisitions should be blocked. They rarely benefit anyone - even the ostensible benefactor, the resulting corporation - and it's hard to imagine how we could have illusions about this at this point. Microsoft will almost assuredly kill Blizzard's homegrown suite of games, given some time, which is why I say this will not benefit them either. There's a purely short-term advantage in locking them onto Xbox.
      • Yep. absolutely!

      • Microsoft will almost assuredly kill Blizzard's homegrown suite of games, given some time

        Do you think so? They've got some very profitable franchises over there, I would think what Microsoft would want most is some new titles whose cadence matches their new consoles.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          MS has killed off a lot of products that were profitable before they acquired them. That's hardly proof, of course.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by HBI ( 10338492 )
          Find me something they have bought and then prospered under their management? They were almost always better as third parties. Partially, it's that the current staff of acquisitions all leave ultimately. Partially it's that Microsoft can't make effective strategic decisions. Partially it's that Microsoft is paralyzed by corporate infighting - which is assuredly related to the poor decisionmaking. Note: ex-MSFT employee. I know whereof I speak. Satya was effective pre-COVID, for a time, now it appears

  • We really need less mergers and aquisitions (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wakeboarder ( 2695839 ) on Thursday April 27, 2023 @11:41AM (#63480858)
    They mostly benefit bigger companies and investors not consumers, yeah you get some efficiencies but the costs savings usually get passed on to the stakeholders. In the case of games it will result in less innovation and ideas. Thank you UK for doing something sensible. I wish the USA would do more of this with tech companies, especially if there are only a few players left in the market.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by theCoder ( 23772 )

      Just make the tax rate proportional to the company's total revenue, not profit. Personally, I would also tax the revenue not profit, too, and get rid of all those "it's OK to waste money because it's a tax writeoff" attitudes. And it would be harder to cheat. If taxes go up faster as the company grows, then companies will think twice about merging just to have a bigger bottom line.

      But I doubt this will ever actually happen. Companies have way too much leverage over politicians to ever let this happen.

  • Microsoft's president Brad Smith said the UK regulator's decision to prevent its acquisition of 'Call of Duty' maker Activision Blizzard "had shaken confidence" in Britain as a destination for tech businesses.

    No, only for tech monopolies, or at least oligopolies. Tech businesses, whose primary pursuit is doing business and not just screwing everyone with predatory practices, welcome sensible regulation that fosters competition.

  • So take your ball and go home. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Thursday April 27, 2023 @11:44AM (#63480868)

    I didn't really see a problem with that acquisition. When I saw what Microsoft put on the table, I thought it'd go through. I don't own MSFT so I'm not financially invested in this, but I do think Activision (and Blizzard) need to be saved from themselves. I think it's reasonable if Microsoft chooses to inflict some damage with the tools at their disposal. All's fair. The UK is swiftly losing it's ability to keep or attract businesses anyway - if Microsoft makes a lateral movie to some friendlier destination in Europe, I could completely understand it.

    • The EU thing was just a cheap shot at the British government (which isn't even the organisation that made the decision here) out of... spite, I guess? Surely no-one on Microsoft's board really thinks the EU is going to be a particularly welcoming environment for Big Tech any time soon. It has a growing track record of hitting the biggest US tech firms with all kinds of regulations and extra taxes (however you dress them up in legal and accounting terms, that's essentially what's been happening).

      Most of Euro

    • ... what Microsoft put on the table ...

      The UK M&A watch-dog was thinking ahead: Microsoft and its Windows OS own the online-gaming space (X-box literally and Steam product-wise) and giving them a near-monopoly on games was not acceptable.

  • Could someone explain why some random regulator in UK has any say in the merger of 2 United States companies? I mean I get that MS especially is a large global company, but legally how does that work, can any country in the world stop any merger?? I could see that they could register an objection with the appropriate regulators in the USA, but I'd think that would be it. What am I missing? -Josh
    • When companies grow large enough, they have offices in very many countries. These countries then have something to say about the things said companies do. And if they grow large enough, the companies can have an influence on countries they don't have offices in. These countries would likely want to have something to say when said companies do something.

  • According to the stock market, Microsoft was just handed a gift by UK regulators.

  • So what, any country that doesn't allow a tech company to buy, own, consolidate and monopolize everything is a bad message to the tech sector? The giants in the tech sector send a bad message about the tech sector is more like it.

    Also, don't try to lump in your corporate super conglorermate purchases as if it had something to do with the tech sector. It has nothing to do with the tech sector, it simply as to do you with owning the rights to more video games. That's it.

  • I don't really care either way. I only approve of the deal because Activision Blizzard is currently a toxic shithole of a company whose AAA titles are worse than most indie games. The company hasn't put out anything of actual high quality in over a decade. The company will not get better by itself. Someone needs to buy and fix them, or they need to be completely destroyed, sell off IPs, and go out of business. There is no middle ground solution. The middle ground is do nothing, which solves nothing. Persona

  • If they think the EU is gonna be much nicer to them they need to reflect on the fact the UK wanted looser regulations amongst other things which led to leaving the EU... ...and you know what? Fuck MS. They cannot have everything and choke us all off options and competition.
  • I think it's safe to say the last thing they're worried about is jobs. It is a little strange that they would block this one merger and not all the others that they've rubber stamped. It's not like it isn't the same people in charge who've been approving mergers left and right. I get why they blocked the arm buyout but I'm a little shocked and surprised at this one. Still I'll take it.

  • The university I work for has transferred our email system to Microsoft, and it has made our lives a misery. If the ceased operating in the UK, I would be delighted.

    • ^^^^^ 100% agree with this.
      And all the non standard MS was of doing stuff BS.
      This is why there should be no such thing as proprietary data formats, it is MY data, I CREATED it, it is not there to be held hostage by software companies...keep paying or loose it...

      I use a Mac (waits for obligatory abuse), and I get into the situation where some documents here are stores as .msg files, but it turns out that outlook on the Mac can not open those, I mean WTAF.
      MS have had a decades history of making the

      • I use a Mac (waits for obligatory abuse), and I get into the situation where some documents here are stores as .msg files, but it turns out that outlook on the Mac can not open those, I mean WTAF.

        I don't know if this is still true, but a while back I wanted to get some Unix format mail into lookout and it didn't have a mbox format import. And what I came up with was to use mbx2eml to convert a mbox file into a crapload of .eml files, which Outlook also can't load, but which I could load into Outlook Express. Outlook can import from OE mail files directly, and efficiently, so that was the last step.

        • AppleMail has ALWAYS had mbox import.
          Its Under "File -> Import Mailboxes"

          It may have imported the WHOLE mailbox rather than individual emails, but it is there.

  • Why cloud? (Score:3)

    by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot@worf.ERDOSnet minus math_god> on Thursday April 27, 2023 @01:58PM (#63481344)

    The cloud streaming providers practically imploded on themselves.

    Sony bought Gaikai years ago - they were streaming games way before xCloud or anyone else were thinking of streaming games. And Sony bought them so they could do Playstation Now during the PS4 era. Effectively, Sony had a 10 year head start in game streaming - and those people who played the service actually found it decent, other than the low resolution. All Sony did was acquire it, and kill it. Playstation Now is hardly anything now after Sony decided they "won" the console wars and abandoned TV, DVD player, and phone platforms and required you to play on the PS4.

    Stadia well, pretty much imploded because of lousy business models and well, Google.

    Microsoft's xCloud service remains only because the big competitors, despite having a huge advantage over Microsoft (both Playstation Now and Stadia existed well before xCloud) collapsed on themselves And it's not even available in general - you have to be a Game Pass subscriber to use it.

    Microsoft is dominating in cloud gaming purely because its competitors decided to exit the market.

  • Matt Stoller has an explanation about the CMA's concerns, which he shares. https://mattstoller.substack.c... [substack.com]

  • If the government of the United Kingdom wants to bring in investment, if it wants to create jobs (...) it needs to look hard at the role of the CMA, the regulatory structure in the United Kingdom, this transaction, and the message that the United Kingdom has just said to the world...

    I would counter that with "If Microsoft wants continued access to UK markets, and doesn't want the government itself to ditch Windows in favour of Linux as other governments have done, it needs to look hard at its anti-competitive role in creating and promoting monopolies, and at the predatory, extortionist message it has just sent to the world".

    Corporations exist and conduct business with the permission of and at the sufferance of governments. Now that governments are starting to take corporate abuses seri

  • UK here. Don't try to anti-compete, M$, and maybe your words would sound better than the wailings of a hiant who was defeated by a puny bloke with a miniscule stone.
  • This is an outright threat. Time to break them up.

  • Sounds like the deal is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

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