Judge Denies FTC Motion to Block Closing of Microsoft/Activision

U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley for Northern California in San Francisco denied the FTC’s motion for a preliminary injunction to block Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard buy from being consummated, said her signed opinion Tuesday (docket 3:23-cv-02880). The FTC hasn’t shown that it’s likely to succeed on its assertion that Microsoft/Activision “will probably pull” Call of Duty from Sony PlayStation, or that its ownership of Activision content “will substantially lessen competition in the video game library subscription and cloud gaming markets,” said Corley’s heavily redacted opinion.

The FTC appears to contend “it need only show the combined firm would have a greater ability and incentive to foreclose Call of Duty from its rivals than an independent Activision,” said Corley’s opinion. But that assertion “ignores the text of Section 7" of the FTC Act, it said: “It is not enough that a merger might lessen competition -- the FTC must show the merger will probably substantially lessen competition.”