The European Commission, Europe's regulator, is said to want "feedback" about Microsoft's recently restructured Activision-Blizzard megadeal.
That's what outlet Reuters is now reporting, based on information from sources close to the matter. Although an in-depth investigation of the restructured planned merger between Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard-King is "unlikely" at this point, the EU regulator is looking for input from both rivals and customers about the new deal. "However, the EU antitrust watchdog has since emailed companies to ask for feedback", the report from Reuters reads. "The sources said it has not launched a formal investigation, suggesting it may be waiting for a CMA decision before making any move."
As said, according to Reuter's sources, a formal investigation into the restructured deal appears to be implausible.
Back in May of this year, the EU watchdog approved the planned merger between Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard-King. Several weeks before that, UK regulator CMA blocked the deal, citing that the deal would hurt the cloud gaming industry. "We have therefore concluded that combining Activision’s strong portfolio of games with Microsoft’s current multiple cloud gaming strengths would enable Microsoft to harm current and emerging cloud gaming competitors by withholding Activision games from them and, unlike in the case of consoles, we have not found that there are any material reasons to stop it doing this", the CMA concluded this April.
Since then, Microsoft has actively been talking with the CMA in order to get the deal through in the UK, and last month, Microsoft announced a new variant of the megadeal which includes selling Activision-Blizzard-King cloud gaming rights to Ubisoft. While the European Commission has approved the original deal, the EU regulator hasn't commented substantively on the restructured deal - the watchdog only said that it's following the developments in the UK. "We are closely following the developments in the UK and assessing the impact this may have on the commitments accepted by the Commission in case M.10646 - Microsoft/Activision."
We'll update you as soon as more information about this heavily-debated merger comes in. For now stay tuned.
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