Key facts of Microsoft Acquistion of Activision/Blizzard

General Discussion
7

To clarify, Bobby Kotick is still the CEO, however news articles are reporting he will leave once the acquisition is complete.

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8

What excuses now for overwatch 2 development progress? Also about mercy dubbing on brazil since her unfortunately has died, BLIZZARD DIDN’T RELEASE ANY NOTES ABOUT THIS.

9

I think this is a Tragedy. But from an evil businessman’s standpoint. The move is a power play.

  • Pending Lawsuits
  • Enough dirty laundry in the basket to potentially bankrupt the company in lawsuits.
  • A CEO that is in LOTS o trouble.

It is a smart tactical move on their part. Sell out, shell out and GET OUT. so they can leave with their money and cut their losses while they board the life raft and avoid more charges.

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10

Is… this false then?

I know he stays CEO for the duration of the transition… but it looks like he’s gone when it’s done.

EDIT

Ahhh… ok so we’re going with “only things that have been clearly and legally defined” then. Got it.

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11

With a bloated $250 million payout.

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12

Not like Kotick walks away with millions either way.

13

And voilà!

Blizzard will not have to make a new IP for at least another 15 years!

14

I’m on PS4, will progress carry over to other platforms if M$ decided to pull support from PS/Nintendo?

15

Way too early to be speculating on that. Again the deal is not expected to be done until Summer 2023.

16

I called it. :rofl:

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17

We can only HOPE they reject the payment and decide against it. But something tells me it is a set-n-stone deal. Im not happy at all. Just because of how Microsoft treats their community. Which is the lowest of the low.

18

The deal is signed. The only thing that could hold up the deal is any government-regulatory interjections, which I don’t see happening based on all of the available facts.

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19

There won’t be anymore pressure to get rid of Kotick. His job will simply no longer exist once the deal goes through. Microsoft has zero reason to keep the Blizzard name going once they own the IP’s.

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20

Do yall think there’s any chance of OW or WoW going free to play because of this?

Or do acquisitions like this always retain their game’s monetization strategy afterwards?

I just remember Archeage completely changing its monetization after it got passed around

21

I know articles state that Bliz will continue as-is until the deal is finished around the summer of '23. I hope they don’t cease development of OW2 or maintenance of OW1 in the interim, whether by dev-choice or under corporate direction. Pushing a few updates between now and then, even if they are regular experimental patches, would probably help the community stay afloat and keep hope alive. At least it would for me.

22

The only concrete evidence we have about the future of current titles is that the official announcement on news.xbox.com stated.

Upon close, we will offer as many Activision Blizzard games as we can within Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass, both new titles and games from Activision Blizzard’s incredible catalog.

Depends on the game and the companies involved.

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23

We are already at the lowest of low. Good riddance to the current blizz team, worst case scenario this game stays exactly how they been keeping it

24

Thank you for this write up, it helps a lot. I guess we will just have to wait and see what consequences this results in.

25

Accounts will most likely be migrated to Microsoft. We all know Microsoft wants to bring customers on their platforms, to promote more of their services.

26

yeah, the services Soshana Zuboff pointed out. Im so excited already.