When you’re talking about a deal as big as Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard King, the eye-grabbing initial announcement – with its almost $70 billion price tag making every previous games industry merger look like peanuts by comparison – is only the beginning.
For a smaller deal, the story a few months later that the merger has completed is basically a formality; the deal is in the bag once the parties get to the point of announcing their corporate nuptials to the world.
With this much money, and some of the world’s most successful entertainment franchises, on the table, however, the Microsoft-ABK deal was always going to attract scrutiny from competition authorities – and this week, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority made the road a little bumpier for both parties, with a report into the deal that’s distinctly negative about its impacts on competition in the games space.