Earlier this month, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the UK blocked Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard due to concerns that Microsoft's advantage in cloud gaming would be further strengthened.
Fast forward just a few weeks later, the EU regulators came to a conclusion that the deal could be allowed to go through based on Microsoft's commitments in cloud gaming. They found that Microsoft "would have no incentive to refuse to distribute Activision’s games to Sony", and "even if Microsoft did decide to withdraw Activision’s games from the PlayStation, this would not significantly harm competition in the consoles market."
However, the EU regulators are also worried that this acquisition might lead to the same concerns that the CMA had raised, potentially harming competition in cloud gaming services.
Therefore, the European Commission has identified solutions to tackle these concern, including 10-year licensing agreements offered by Microsoft to competitors. As part of these agreements, consumers in EU countries would enjoy the freedom to stream any current and future Activision Blizzard PC and console games they have a license for through the cloud gaming service of their choosing.
According to previous reports, Microsoft has signed a 10-year agreement with Nintendo to bring the Call of Duty series to Nintendo platforms. They have also entered into a long-term partnership with NVIDIA to bring Xbox PC games to NVIDIA GeForce NOW cloud service. In addition, Microsoft has publicly stated earlier that they are willing to sign a contract with Sony to continue providing native versions of Call of Duty to the Playstation platform, but it appears that there have been no further developments on this matter.
