SAN FRANCISCO — The fate of what might be the mostcostly merger in tech market history is now in the hands of a federal judge who needto choose whether to stop Microsoft from closing its offer to buy video videogame business Activision Blizzard.
Federal antitrust enforcers have tooklegalactionagainst to block the $69 billion acquisition that they state will damage competitors inbetween Microsoft and videogaming market rivals such as Sony and Nintendo.
And much of the choice might rest on a single Activision hit franchise, the military taskforce videogame Call of Duty, and whether Microsoft might damage competitors by managing how it is dispersed to players.
“All of this is for a shooter video videogame,” stated U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, expressing a tip of exasperation about the nature of the disagreement near the end of a 5-day San Francisco court hearing Thursday. “We’re worried about the competitors for this one shooter video videogame.”
Microsoft has mainly had the upper hand in the court procedures that ended Thursday, calling in its CEO Satya Nadella and other executives, consistingof longtime Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, to affirm in favor of the merger.
The Federal Trade Commission, which imposes antitrust laws, has asked Corley to concern an injunction that would briefly block Microsoft and Activision from closing the offer priorto the FTC’s internal judge can evaluation it in an August trial.
Both Microsoft and Activision have recommended that such a hold-up would efficiently force them to desert the offer they signed 17 months earlier. Microsoft guaranteed to pay a $3 billion separation cost to Activision if the offer doesn’t close by July18
“The relief the FTC looksfor is not just unmatched however deal-killing,” stated Microsoft’s lead lawyer, Beth Wilkinson, in a last written defense submitted Thursday.
The case is an crucial test for the FTC’s increased examination of the innovation market under its Chair Lina Khan, setup by President Joe Biden in 202