In a major victory for Microsoft and one of the three important markets which the Activision Blizzard acquisition can be stopped or paused have given the blessing for the transaction to close and this is a major blow to USA's FTC and UK’s CMA.

While it remains to be seen in the USA scenario with the FTC ready to challenge the transaction and a pending appeal from the CMA, Microsoft landed an important victory with European Zone Regulators approving the transaction in an official statement posted today.

In a TLDR, the very same reasoning of the CMA denying the approval of the Activision Blizzard transaction in the UK, was the very same reason the EE approved the transaction, Microsoft commitment on Cloud Gaming market and not trying to dominate, specially with the Call Of Duty franchise.

The commission in charge of investigating the buyout found NO evidence that suggests harm to rival consoles and rival multi-game subscription services, but that it could harm competition in the distribution of games via cloud game streaming services, and in the supply of PC operating systems.

To answer that concern, Microsoft have been landing agreements with many competitors, specially the still small Cloud Gaming industry members to have either Call Of Duty or more Activision Blizzard developed games available for their respective service for a guaranteed 10 year period.

It was revealed that Sony rejected this as it sees that Microsoft will use Call Of Duty as a deterrence for people showing Playstation as Call Of Duty platform and also have suggested that Microsoft is in a well position to make things harder for Playstation, acknowledging that CAll Of Duty is its biggest 3rd party sale driver for Playstation.

About the 10 year agreement, the report included on how the agreement works:

• “A free license to consumers in the EEA that would allow them to stream, via any cloud game streaming services of their choice, all current and future Activision Blizzard PC and console games for which they have a license.

• A corresponding free license to cloud game streaming service providers to allow EEA-based gamers to stream any Activision Blizzard’s PC and console games.

These licenses will ensure that gamers that have purchased one or more Activision games on a PC or console store, or that have subscribed to a multi-game subscription service that includes Activision games, have the right to stream those games with any cloud game streaming service of their choice and play them on any device using any operating system.

The commitments fully address the competition concerns identified by the Commission and represent a significant improvement for cloud gaming as compared to the current situation.”

In the United States side, FTC cannot be happy with this approval as it was long rumored that their December early denial was done under the pressure that would have lost the protagonist as that very same day, it was the first day of Microsoft meeting with EU regulators.

FTC under the Biden Administration has vowed on not allowing mergers from big companies just for the mere reason of still keep being a giant and dominant force in it respective market but, observers sees that Microsoft have some legal possibilities on prospering on both FTC and CMA’s wrath as they focused on areas that Microsoft have been already answering preemptively and also, Sony’s lobbying with lawmakers in favor of a dire scenario narrative for Playstation actually backfired when some congress member actually called out Sony on being the wrong side and actually, messed up Xbox in Japanese market.