Last year, Microsoft announced its planned $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, but it wasn't a smooth sailing and has since faced many obstacles. To demonstrate its goodwill, the company has since made various promises, such as signing a partnership agreement with Nintendo to bring the Call of Duty series to Switch, working with NVIDIA to bring Xbox PC games to the NVIDIA GeForce NOW cloud gaming service, and guaranteeing the Call of Duty's release on the Playstation platforms.

However, these actions were still unable to sway the decision of the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). The CMA has officially issued a statement disapproving Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, as the organization believes that Microsoft is in a dominant position within the cloud gaming market and this acquisition would put the company in a more advantageous position.

Despite Microsoft's efforts to address the concerns and propose solutions, including the aforementioned partnership agreements, they were still unable to alleviate the CMA's worries, resulting in the disapproval of the acquisition. Of course, after the CMA's statement was issued, both Microsoft and Activision Blizzard announced that they will continue to appeal the decision, claiming that the CMA's ruling reflects a misunderstanding of the market and the actual operation of cloud technology, hindering technological innovation and investment in the UK market, and even reducing employment opportunities.