4 ms·

> It just seems odd that such an unimportant merger is being so strongly resisted. Videogames are a huge consumer market. Monopolistic behavior will harm consu

> It just seems odd that such an unimportant merger is being so strongly resisted. Videogames are a huge consumer market. Monopolistic behavior will harm consumers. The fact that other companies in others areas "are allowed to pretty much own everything" is a non-comment. Hypothetical regulatory actions against "the likes of Blackrock and Vanguard" do not preclude regulatory action against Microsoft/Activision.

hospitalJail 3y ago
>Monopolistic behavior will harm consumers. Why is buying 1 studio monopolistic? I have been gaming for decades and I've never felt the need to play games from every studio. Heck, large studios are mostly a negative in the modern era. They have the resources to use microtransactions and DRM. Meanwhile indie games have to try their best to get any attention. Even if M$ bought every studio in existence, PlayStation and Nintendo, there would still be indie games in a few years. Not to mention uncountable number of games from the last few decades that is enough entertainment to last you a few lifetimes.
- shlubbert 3y ago
  The proposed acquisition is not for "1 studio" but for the entire Activision-Blizzard-King holding company which owns some of the biggest IPs in both the traditional and mobile gaming space, coming just after Microsoft acquired another huge publisher (Zenimax/Bethesda).
  - hospitalJail 3y ago
    Oh noes, guess I'll have to play a different game. Seriously, IP is not something to worship. There is infinity entertainment. The only thing negative are the people who can't shake loyalty to IP.
    - shlubbert 3y ago
      Well, good luck with your campaign to sway the entire gaming market and change fundamental human behavior.
      - hospitalJail 3y ago
        If the monopoly is that bad, the market will sway. But we may already be seeing what you describe with mobile/web/app games and the surge of steam indie games. Making video games is easier than drilling for oil, and yet there was never an oil monopoly.
- surgical_fire 3y ago
  > Why is buying 1 studio monopolistic? Activision is not "1 studio". It is a major publisher of very large videogame IPs. If the idea is to round up major publishers, "1 studio" at a time, to starve the competition of their suppliers... In what world would that not be monopolistic?
  - hospitalJail 3y ago
    This world. There is no barrier to entry to video games. Heck, I made a video game.
    - surgical_fire 3y ago
      If a man makes a videogame, and no one plays it, did he make a videogame?
      - hospitalJail 3y ago
        Contrary, I had all my friends play it. One of them was addicted and we were supposed to go somewhere and I had to kick them off. Lucky for me, he fat thumbed some way to break the game and his level 283 character was lost to history. Basically made a crappy text based rpg when I was 16 years old in the first week I learned programming.
- tmottabr 3y ago
  except what sell consoles are AAA games and not indie games.. Most people will buy indie games for the console they own and they choose the console based on what their social circle have and what big games are available.
WorldMaker 3y ago
I'd also add with respect to the importance of the merger: this merger has signaled that Activision's board are looking for an exit. Activision's own long, weird, sloppy history is being the company a lot of other companies exited into. Activision owns an absurd amount of the cultural past of videogames because of its fast and loose mergers and acquisitions game. In turn Activision have seemed to be dreadful archivists and gatekeepers of the massive amount of industry history that they own. There are Infocom and Sierra and Davidson and Knowledge Associates classics that are still locked in their vaults that can't be legally purchased today. (GOG has done a lot to change that, but there's always still more in the Activision vaults.) Among other things, they've "lost" entire 1990s/2000s franchises that all signs point to them having the legal rights but they have no clue what happened to them ("No One Lives Forever" is a favorite example of some, and the easiest example to mind, but isn't the only example). There's an importance to them signaling their own interest in exiting here because of that history of exits that Activision already oversaw. Whoever buys Activision next may have an easy bar to clear on being better than Activision was at owning such a large part of the past of videogames. But we don't want to underestimate how much of a gatekeeper versus archivist dynamic is in play of whoever buys Activision or whichever way Activision exits. (If Activision were instead to exit via vultures in one way or another, who knows what will happen to the past of videogames if the raw pieces are all put up for the highest bidder and scattered to the winds. That may be a good thing, or it could mean that even the piecemeal access on GOG to Activision's back catalog is at risk. We wouldn't know until the dust clears and by then it may be too late.)
- bluescrn 3y ago
  Preserving digital culture is a legit issue. But it's about copyright laws, not about corporate mergers. Apple have wiped vast numbers of early iPhone games from existence by having their walled garden and limited backward compatibility. Most early iPhone games, from the 32-bit pre-F2P era will never be played again. But nobody really cares about those. Much bigger games have been lost too. Many MMOs, in particular, as nobody ever had access to the server-side code. And most modern console games have online components and risk becoming unplayable when the servers are turned off. Classics from Infocom and Sierra can at least be preserved by enthusiasts, as physical copies still exist and individual fans can ignore the copyright question. The digital preservation issue extends beyond games, too. We may be entering a future were even books, in their digital form, are frequently updated to fit present-day cultural sensitivities. And without physical copies, it may become impossible to reference the original text, or even know whether edits have occurred.

hospitalJail 3y ago

>Monopolistic behavior will harm consumers. Why is buying 1 studio monopolistic? I have been gaming for decades and I've never felt the need to play games from every studio. Heck, large studios are mostly a negative in the modern era. They have the resources to use microtransactions and DRM. Meanwhile indie games have to try their best to get any attention. Even if M$ bought every studio in existence, PlayStation and Nintendo, there would still be indie games in a few years. Not to mention uncountable number of games from the last few decades that is enough entertainment to last you a few lifetimes.

shlubbert 3y ago
The proposed acquisition is not for "1 studio" but for the entire Activision-Blizzard-King holding company which owns some of the biggest IPs in both the traditional and mobile gaming space, coming just after Microsoft acquired another huge publisher (Zenimax/Bethesda).
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  Oh noes, guess I'll have to play a different game. Seriously, IP is not something to worship. There is infinity entertainment. The only thing negative are the people who can't shake loyalty to IP.
  - shlubbert 3y ago
    Well, good luck with your campaign to sway the entire gaming market and change fundamental human behavior.
    - hospitalJail 3y ago
      If the monopoly is that bad, the market will sway. But we may already be seeing what you describe with mobile/web/app games and the surge of steam indie games. Making video games is easier than drilling for oil, and yet there was never an oil monopoly.
surgical_fire 3y ago
> Why is buying 1 studio monopolistic? Activision is not "1 studio". It is a major publisher of very large videogame IPs. If the idea is to round up major publishers, "1 studio" at a time, to starve the competition of their suppliers... In what world would that not be monopolistic?
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  This world. There is no barrier to entry to video games. Heck, I made a video game.
  - surgical_fire 3y ago
    If a man makes a videogame, and no one plays it, did he make a videogame?
    - hospitalJail 3y ago
      Contrary, I had all my friends play it. One of them was addicted and we were supposed to go somewhere and I had to kick them off. Lucky for me, he fat thumbed some way to break the game and his level 283 character was lost to history. Basically made a crappy text based rpg when I was 16 years old in the first week I learned programming.
tmottabr 3y ago
except what sell consoles are AAA games and not indie games.. Most people will buy indie games for the console they own and they choose the console based on what their social circle have and what big games are available.

WorldMaker 3y ago

I'd also add with respect to the importance of the merger: this merger has signaled that Activision's board are looking for an exit. Activision's own long, weird, sloppy history is being the company a lot of other companies exited into. Activision owns an absurd amount of the cultural past of videogames because of its fast and loose mergers and acquisitions game. In turn Activision have seemed to be dreadful archivists and gatekeepers of the massive amount of industry history that they own. There are Infocom and Sierra and Davidson and Knowledge Associates classics that are still locked in their vaults that can't be legally purchased today. (GOG has done a lot to change that, but there's always still more in the Activision vaults.) Among other things, they've "lost" entire 1990s/2000s franchises that all signs point to them having the legal rights but they have no clue what happened to them ("No One Lives Forever" is a favorite example of some, and the easiest example to mind, but isn't the only example). There's an importance to them signaling their own interest in exiting here because of that history of exits that Activision already oversaw. Whoever buys Activision next may have an easy bar to clear on being better than Activision was at owning such a large part of the past of videogames. But we don't want to underestimate how much of a gatekeeper versus archivist dynamic is in play of whoever buys Activision or whichever way Activision exits. (If Activision were instead to exit via vultures in one way or another, who knows what will happen to the past of videogames if the raw pieces are all put up for the highest bidder and scattered to the winds. That may be a good thing, or it could mean that even the piecemeal access on GOG to Activision's back catalog is at risk. We wouldn't know until the dust clears and by then it may be too late.)

bluescrn 3y ago
Preserving digital culture is a legit issue. But it's about copyright laws, not about corporate mergers. Apple have wiped vast numbers of early iPhone games from existence by having their walled garden and limited backward compatibility. Most early iPhone games, from the 32-bit pre-F2P era will never be played again. But nobody really cares about those. Much bigger games have been lost too. Many MMOs, in particular, as nobody ever had access to the server-side code. And most modern console games have online components and risk becoming unplayable when the servers are turned off. Classics from Infocom and Sierra can at least be preserved by enthusiasts, as physical copies still exist and individual fans can ignore the copyright question. The digital preservation issue extends beyond games, too. We may be entering a future were even books, in their digital form, are frequently updated to fit present-day cultural sensitivities. And without physical copies, it may become impossible to reference the original text, or even know whether edits have occurred.