According to a report issued by Dealreporter and shared today by Seeking Alpha, Microsoft has obtained the approval of the Chinese State Administration for Market Regulation on the $68.7 billion Activision Blizzard merger.
The investigation of the State Administration for Market Regulation had reached a late stage (Phase III), but the Chinese regulator ultimately granted unconditional approval. That is to say, no remedies were requested of Microsoft.
On Monday, the European Union also approved the massive merger, though the EU regulator did request behavioural remedies related to cloud gaming since making the prized Activision Blizzard games exclusive to Microsoft's cloud service (currently linked to the Game Pass Ultimate subscription tier) could have harmed competitors.
Microsoft had previously entered multiple bilateral 10-year deals with companies like GeForce NOW (which already got its first Microsoft-published game, Gears 5), Boosteroid, Ubitus, EE, and Nware, but the EU regulator obtained even more than that in the final approval. Microsoft will now offer a free 10-year license for all its games (including Activision Blizzard's once the deal is fully cleared) to cloud gaming platforms, and users will also have the chance to stream any of the games they have a license for via any streaming platform of their choice.
However, as we've extensively covered in the past few weeks, the United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority decided to block the deal. Microsoft heavily contested this ruling, with president Brad Smith calling for UK PM Rishi Sunak to 'look hard' at the CMA, while CEO Satya Nadella didn't even rule out a shocking move like carving out Activision Blizzard titles in the UK version of Game Pass as a loophole of sorts.
The United States Federal Trade Commission also sued to block the merger in late 2022, but it is widely believed that it would actually lose in a prolonged court battle. The CMA remains by far the biggest obstacle to the deal's completion, given the difficulty of overturning its rulings. Still, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard announced they are preparing appeals to the CA Tribunal.
With today's approval from China, the Microsoft-Activision Blizzard merger has been waved through in 38 countries: those in the European Economic Area, China, Japan, Chile, South Africa, Brazil, Ukraine, and Serbia. The total population of said countries is 2.37 billion.
The next countries to render a verdict could be New Zealand and South Korea.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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