Microsoft’s proposed historical acquisition of Call of Duty and Diablo publisher Activision Blizzard has been approved by yet another country, this time being South Korea. The country released an official government document recently confirming that it has unconditionally approved the Xbox merger with Activision Blizzard.
South Korea joins other countries like South Africa, Brazil, Japan, Serbia, Chile and Saudi Arabia in the approval of Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Xbox scored the biggest victory in the ongoing battle to get the market authorities approval when the European Commission gave it the green light earlier this month, though under the condition that Microsoft makes good on its promises for the cloud gaming market with 10-year licensing agreements.
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Shortly before the European Commission gave its final ruling, the UK competition and markets authority (CMA) blocked the deal, stresssing that it would “alter the future of the fast-growing cloud gaming market, leading to reduced innovation and less choice for UK gamers over the years to come.” The CMA’s statement read:
“The CMA has prevented Microsoft’s proposed purchase of Activision over concerns the deal would alter the future of the fast-growing cloud gaming market, leading to reduced innovation and less choice for UK gamers over the years to come. Microsoft has a strong position in cloud gaming services and the evidence available to the CMA showed that Microsoft would find it commercially beneficial to make Activision’s games exclusive to its own cloud gaming service.”
Despite that major bump in the road, several authorities in various countries are slowly giving the deal the go-ahead, with most of them being unconditional. That said, due to the CMA ruling in favour of not allowing the deal to go through, the acquisition could take a few more months to move ahead.
Source: Reddit