Today another national regulator has approved the proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft.
As confirmed to TechRaptor by a Microsoft spokesperson, the Chinese antitrust authority has unconditionally approved the deal, bringing to 37 the number of countries that have given it the green light.
China's unconditional clearance of our acquisition of Activision Blizzard follows clearance decisions from jurisdictions such as the European Union and Japan, bringing the total to 37 countries representing more than two billion people. The acquisition combined with our recent commitments to the European Commission will empower consumers worldwide to play more games on more devices.
This comes hot on the heels of the approval from the European Union, which came earlier this week including proposed remedies to level the competition playing field on the cloud market, which Microsoft agreed to.
This leaves the British CMA isolated in its ruling against the deal, with the American FTC matching its opposition, but having to go through a legal process to actually be able to block it.
With several national antitrust authorities having already approved the deal. We'll have to wait and see how things evolve with Microsoft and Activision have vowed to appeal against the CMA's ruling. For now, the situation still seems to be very much in flow, and it's difficult to predict how this whole saga will end. Of course, we'll keep you posted here on TechRaptor if anything relevant happens.
