But it does not appear that Microsoft’s statements to the EU have been shown to be untrustworthy.
It’s very good lawyer talk.
“Are you going to make Zenimax games available on Sony consoles?”
“I assure you we have a very strong incentive to make Zenimax games available on Sony consoles”
Right; so any vague statement from Microsoft should be ignored. Anything the FTC wants to see happen, they need to get a legally binding commitment to.
Well that’s what the courts (and the EC itself) are going to decide, and decide whether it matters even if they were. FWIW, I think they were bullshitting and it indicates the regulators should only accept legally binding remedies to their competition concerns. But that in itself doesn’t mean that the merger should or will be blocked.
To quote the GI article once more: “a representative for the EU agency that handled the deal offered no comment on whether it agrees that Microsoft did not stay try* to its assurances to the EU on ZeniMax.”
- sic - I assume this is supposed to be “true”
I agree, ultimately this is something for the courts to decide in terms of the FTC’s complaints. I’m skeptical that they will hold up, as they seem to be making some poorly informed statements based primarily on a presumption that MS is bad… which potentially stems from the previous experience the new FTC head has had in the past with MS antitrust suits.
Was she involved in the antitrust over the browser (f’ing iPhone keyboard)?
Actually, I was mistaken, she was more involved with Amazon antitrust stuff previously. She’s too young to have been involved with the MS stuff, I think.
What’s interesting is that she was broadly confirmed by the senate, mainly because politicians in both parties hate Amazon for differing reasons.
Amazon should have been subject to anti-trust legislation a long time ago, and the failure to act there is really demonstrating regulatory capture in the political system.
Focusing on gaming is really taking a big boat and sailing up a little creek, trying to show the regulators have teeth… in industries that don’t matter, that don’t have political support
This is all a semantic argument caused by the FTC using the misleading language “giving assurances”. (I would generally consider this to constitute a commitment).
This is reaching.
Corporations can change strategy very rapidly. People can be replaced. VPs can get overruled by SVPs who can get overruled by the CEO. Such a statement can be made with no intent to deceive.
Also the EC and FTC understand this perfectly well. The EC could easily have asked for an actual commitment if it cared.
Exactly.
We have a winner.
Personally I think given the natural monopolies in tech due to network effects, tighter regulation might work better than the traditional US antitrust system. But that’s a different argument.
I mean, of course it’s a semantic argument, but all you have to do is read the full sentence to see what the FTC said the assurances were about, namely Microsoft’s incentives. You can’t give a commitment about incentives, obviously.
At least all the people with abandoned cybernetic eye implants (as a random instance of healthcare industry consolidation fuckery) will be able to play Call of Duty on PS5. Excellent use of government’s infinite resources.
Man, I wish I could get robot eyes. My organic eyes are hot garbage.
I know it’s not fair to expect everyone on the “the FTC are big meanies” side to have the same justifications for their position, but I’m gonna ask you to choose between these options here. Either this is small potatoes that doesn’t even matter, or it’s the cornerstone of the US economy, it can’t be both at the same time.
I’ll take a shot at this.
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tech companies are the cornerstone of American industry moving forward. If necessary, I can expand on why I think this, but it may not be controversial.
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in this particular case I do not believe the FTC’s argument is sound.
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in this particular case, we are talking about a particular niche of tech development, that isn’t really super critical to public welfare.
I do not see these three ideas at odds with each other.
They come together in the idea that there are groups that span the political spectrum who seem to harbor fairly deep resentment towards the large American tech companies, for a wide variety of reasons. From believing that those companies perpetuate some sort of evil American hegemony, or are bad for labor, or bad for consumersr, or are easy targets for broader criticisms of capitalism, to those who imagine conspiracy theories of the tech companies secretly silencing their political views. Certainly, these criticisms are true, to varying degrees, in varying specific cases.
These various groups then seek to damage those companies (or honestly, sometimes just give the appearance of such, for political cred).
In this case, it may be that the leadership of the FTC is using opposition to this merger in a narrow market, where the case clearly does not result in some sort of monopolistic control, as a vector to attack a company that is seen as “bad” from a broader, more abstract perspective. That is, the merger of these companies within the market of gaming isn’t really the issue, but rather that Microsoft, as a large American tech company, is bad and ultimately should not be allowed to get bigger.
All that said, bear in mind that the different folks here harbor different views about all this stuff, so they may say things which do not fit with things other folks say.
It’s about time someone took a stand for the ethnic group that is the most disempowered, the most discriminated against, mega-corporations.
(For the record, I don’t think Sony’s business practices are somehow better than Microsoft, and I’m not saying the Activision buyout necessarily should be blocked, but this is exactly the sort of deal that should be heavily scrutinized. There’s no reason to act like it’s somehow out of line for regulators to get involved and ask whether or not this is monopolizing a market segment).
But the FTC didn’t seem to care when Sony bought Bungie, despite Sony being the clearly dominant force in the same market.
Aren’t they moving on from the scrutinizing with the court case?
To me, this just seems like a weird point for the FTC to step in.
How can you, as the FTC, with a straight face, block this acquisition, less than 5 years after Disney bought Fox.
That deal feels the same amount of anti-competitive to me. They folded the Simpsons, Xmen (among other franchises) into Disney plus, making them exclusive.
It was a content and IP purchase on the same scale, yet somehow not a problem? If that wasn’t anti-competitive how is this?
Is it really weird that the FTC under different leadership and administration had different ideas than the current one? Particularly when the current FTC has already stated publicly that they intend to pursue riskier cases.
I think the FTC loses this case for all the reasons noted, but the EU sent a warning to MS a few days ago, so they’re not out of the woods yet.