Microsoft Blizzard makes another crucial concession! "Abandons" cloud gaming copyright to appease regulatory concerns

In order to make the UK regulatory "satisfied", Microsoft again concessions, announced the sale of the rights to the Activision Blizzard cloud game to Ubisoft. On August 22, the Microsoft and British competition regulators (CMA) announced that Microsoft had submitted a new deal to Activision Blizzard for its acquisition. According to the new deal, Ubisoft, a French game developer with well-known games such as Assassin's Creed, will obtain the global exclusive cloud game copyright of Activision and the non-exclusive cloud game copyright in Europe in the next 15 years * *. In short, after the agreement was reached, Ubisoft not only won the right to launch all of Activision Blizzard's games on its own subscription service for the next 15 years, but also won the full cloud gaming rights to operate these games. **Under the new terms, Microsoft does not have the right to exclusively publish Blizzard games on the cloud streaming service Xbox Cloud Gaming, nor does it have the right to modify the licensing terms of Activision Blizzard games on competing platforms. Microsoft believes that his new proposal is essentially completely different from the previous one, and expects CMA's review process to be completed before October 18, which is also the deadline for the July deal between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard (but if the deal can be completed before October 18, Microsoft will not have to pay compensation to Activision Blizzard).! Ubisoft also announced that it has reached an agreement with Microsoft. According to the agreement, all existing games including the Call of Duty series and those to be launched in the next 15 years will log on to Ubisoft's subscription service Ubisoft +. In the future, Ubisoft can not only operate its own cloud games produced by Activision Blizzard, but also authorize them to non-Windows system platforms.! Microsoft President Brad Smith said that the new plan will further shrink Microsoft's power to address CMA's concerns about the impact on the cloud gaming industry, and * * Ubisoft will compensate Microsoft through one-time payments and market-based wholesale pricing mechanisms * *, including options to support usage-based pricing. Although Ubisoft needs to compensate Microsoft with a one-time payment, it is a major positive overall. As of press time, Ubisoft's share price is up more than 10%.! ## "appease the last obstacle" in January last year, Microsoft announced that it would acquire Activision Blizzard, which has developed well-known games such as World of Warcraft, at a transaction price of 68.7 billion US dollars in cash. If it succeeds in the end, it will be the largest acquisition in Microsoft history. Since then, however, Microsoft has been "pulling" with regulators in various countries, who are particularly worried that the acquisition may give Microsoft control of this key work of "Call of Duty", which is not conducive to market development. To this end, Microsoft and Nintendo, as well as some game platform reached a 10-year licensing agreement on the call of duty and other games. After the US FTC let go last month, the British CMA became a "roadblock". In April, CMA said it opposed Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, arguing that the deal hurt competition in the cloud gaming market and would block the acquisition after Microsoft made insufficient concessions on antitrust issues. The following month, however, the European Union approved the acquisition, arguing that Microsoft provided a remedy in the cloud gaming space and avoided the antitrust concerns of regulators. Last month, Microsoft Activision Blizzard's acquisition went through dramatic events within a week, such as the failure of the FTC appeal by the US Federal Trade Commission and the 10-year licensing agreement between Microsoft and rival groups on Call of Duty, * * CMA has become the only regulatory agency hindering the deal. Currently, the deal has been approved by regulatory agencies in 39 countries or regions. **However, the CMA said it was" reconsidering "the acquisition as Microsoft's new agreement with Sony materially changed the deal". The CMA said on Tuesday that after reviewing the agreement between Sony and Microsoft, it still stands by its original decision to veto the deal Microsoft new terms must be proposed. For, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard's new restructuring deal has been submitted to the CMA for a new investigation review.! Sarah Cardel, chief executive of the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), said the UK regulator would carefully review the terms of the new deal and seek the views of third parties. In a statement, she said: "Our goal has not changed. Any future decision on the terms of this new transaction will ensure that the growing cloud gaming market can continue to benefit from open and effective competition and continue to drive innovation and choice."