5 ms·

I find the whole thing to be a tempest in a teapot -- why is the FTC involved in this at all? For christ's sake it's a video game! If we were discussing access

I find the whole thing to be a tempest in a teapot -- why is the FTC involved in this at all? For christ's sake it's a video game! If we were discussing access to some critical resource I would understand, but how is this not a criminal waste of our government's time and resources? It reminds me of the congressional baseball steroid hearings. Am I totally off base here? Can anyone explain to me why this case is so critical?

Larrikin 3y ago
You're totally off base. Video games are not just kids stuff. The industry makes nearly three times more money than the film industry. This is exactly the kind of stakes that FTC should be getting involved in.
- dnissley 3y ago
  Both of these industries are entertainment though -- and to me at least it seems there's a pretty limited amount of consumer harm that could come from various IP exclusivity deals. Again -- am I thinking about this wrong? What is the consumer harm that could result from the moving of IP from one company to another? A truly dedicated fan has to buy a different console to play their favorite game? Non-truly dedicated fans play one of the hundreds of other FPS games on the market that work with their console of choice?
  - xboxnolifes 3y ago
    The point is to make sure there is always another console you could move to, and that there is a hundred other fps titles on the market.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      yes, all 2 alternatives. Much choice. There is always phones and PC for "open platform" at least.
  - firebirdn99 3y ago
    The FTC is getting involved, because the goal is to make Big Tech smaller not more bigger, and more dominant through acquiring independent studios with major titles, such as they did with $7B Bethesda, and now 65B+ Activision deal. These are huge IPs, that have large amounts of players, and can give a company like MSFT huge control in gaming, and in the metaverse,etc in the future, which is another nascent field. But far off, that they have not mentioned it in the case or with the public.
    - dnissley 3y ago
      How would players be harmed by an IP changing hands and being made exclusive on a particular platform?
      - firebirdn99 3y ago
        For one, lack of consumer choice. To play those games, I would need to buy an Xbox, whereas for the last 20 years, Call of Duty, etc. has been multiplatform.
        dnissley 3y ago
        That's literally one game. That's it. Lack of consumer choice when it comes to a single title shouldn't be something that the FTC is getting involved in. Even when you expand that to all the titles that activision/blizzard produce we're talking a tiny drop in a literal ocean of consumer choice.
        firebirdn99 3y ago
        Activision has dozens of famous titles, and a huge IP catalog from the 80's which they can make 100's of exclusives. The $68 Billion price tag tells itself of it's importance in gaming.
        firebirdn99 3y ago
        Should corporations the size of Microsoft (almost 25x of Sony, the 2nd nearest competitor) be allowed to make acquisitions of this size to grow itself, and weaken competition. Antitrust law is one of the FTC's mandates, then this is what they are tasked to do. When (tech) corporations are too big, I can think of many ways it can cause destruction to society. Only have to look at Facebook in the 2016 election. And tech companies will continue to grow, and become too big to fail, unless reigned upon as with past crises, like with banks. Only this time, they have all your information, can surveil you, etc, and with AI pretty soon.
  - majormajor 3y ago
    Why does it matter that it's entertainment? If at some point consumers have to pay more than they would in a more competitive market, how is that not harm? If you believe that this is a move that will result in less consumer choice and more possibility for MS to extract more $$$$, then you don't like it.
    - midoridensha 3y ago
      >If at some point consumers have to pay more than they would in a more competitive market, how is that not harm? No one HAS to pay for entertainment. It's a pure luxury. There's tons of things you can do with your free time besides playing video games (let alone brand-new AAA console titles): go outside, take a hike, play an instrument, take up a hobby, socialize, learn to cook, write your own software, I could go on and on. You can even do other forms of entertainment with your time: watch a movie or TV series, watch YouTube, watch a sports game, actually play in a sports game, play retro video games on archive.org or in an emulator, etc. All these things compete with (modern Activision) video games for time.
      - swift532 3y ago
        Well if you take it to the point of absurdity, then we only have to maintain a competitive market for grain and water.
        dnissley 3y ago
        I'm not sure this is absurdity. The point is that no company could possibly have an abusable monopoly on entertainment because A) the sheer variety of things there are to do for entertainment, B) the incredibly low barriers to entry in entertainment, and C) that even if there were some entity that gained control over some significant portion of it, that vast majority of people would just do something, anything else rather than submit to such a monopolist's demands. They might be grumpy about it on some level, but that's hardly rising to the level of consumer harm. You might say there is still the case of some tiny number of incredibly dependent people who would continue playing and paying for certain titles no matter the cost, but that is their decision -- they are not without agency to simply say no, and so even that doesn't rise to the level of consumer harm.
abduhl 3y ago
[flagged]
- ahstilde 3y ago
  ??? How is Lina Khan "pro-foreign-corporation" ?
throwawy1934593 3y ago
I don't think you get how much money is involved in video games now days The last Call of Duty game crossed a billion dollars in 10 days
- dnissley 3y ago
  Money in itself is not an argument for FTC involvement. E.g. the wedding industry is also enormous, within an order of magnitude of the video game industry in the US.
  - failuser 3y ago
    If weddings were monopolized by General Vowes then it would have been a duty of FTC to look into it.
    - dnissley 3y ago
      That's just it though -- video games are not "monopolized" in any meaningful sense. A particular IP may be "monopolized" -- e.g. owned by a particular company that has more or less of an interest in producing cross platform versions. But that's not really a monopoly, is it?
      - failuser 3y ago
        Sony and Microsoft are buying game developers left and right. Will the courts allow Microsoft to buy Sony gaming business? Microsoft is also getting ready to eat Steam’s lunch for a while on the PC side. Will that be allowed to go through?
        dnissley 3y ago
        > Will the courts allow Microsoft to buy Sony gaming business? Why not? What would it matter to the players on these consoles? Is demand for certain titles so price insensitive that Microsoft could then jack up the price by 100% and people would still buy them? Even if that's true (it's almost certainly not) the barriers to entry in the video game business are extremely low, so this would just create an enormous opportunity and pissed off consumers would jump to a newly created platform.
failuser 3y ago
Games are bigger than most movies. Besides, gaming was responsible for a lot of innovation in computing, we all know how well that will go under a Microsoft monopoly.

Larrikin 3y ago

You're totally off base. Video games are not just kids stuff. The industry makes nearly three times more money than the film industry. This is exactly the kind of stakes that FTC should be getting involved in.

dnissley 3y ago
Both of these industries are entertainment though -- and to me at least it seems there's a pretty limited amount of consumer harm that could come from various IP exclusivity deals. Again -- am I thinking about this wrong? What is the consumer harm that could result from the moving of IP from one company to another? A truly dedicated fan has to buy a different console to play their favorite game? Non-truly dedicated fans play one of the hundreds of other FPS games on the market that work with their console of choice?
- xboxnolifes 3y ago
  The point is to make sure there is always another console you could move to, and that there is a hundred other fps titles on the market.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    yes, all 2 alternatives. Much choice. There is always phones and PC for "open platform" at least.
- firebirdn99 3y ago
  The FTC is getting involved, because the goal is to make Big Tech smaller not more bigger, and more dominant through acquiring independent studios with major titles, such as they did with $7B Bethesda, and now 65B+ Activision deal. These are huge IPs, that have large amounts of players, and can give a company like MSFT huge control in gaming, and in the metaverse,etc in the future, which is another nascent field. But far off, that they have not mentioned it in the case or with the public.
  - dnissley 3y ago
    How would players be harmed by an IP changing hands and being made exclusive on a particular platform?
    - firebirdn99 3y ago
      For one, lack of consumer choice. To play those games, I would need to buy an Xbox, whereas for the last 20 years, Call of Duty, etc. has been multiplatform.
      - dnissley 3y ago
        That's literally one game. That's it. Lack of consumer choice when it comes to a single title shouldn't be something that the FTC is getting involved in. Even when you expand that to all the titles that activision/blizzard produce we're talking a tiny drop in a literal ocean of consumer choice.
        firebirdn99 3y ago
        Activision has dozens of famous titles, and a huge IP catalog from the 80's which they can make 100's of exclusives. The $68 Billion price tag tells itself of it's importance in gaming.
        firebirdn99 3y ago
        Should corporations the size of Microsoft (almost 25x of Sony, the 2nd nearest competitor) be allowed to make acquisitions of this size to grow itself, and weaken competition. Antitrust law is one of the FTC's mandates, then this is what they are tasked to do. When (tech) corporations are too big, I can think of many ways it can cause destruction to society. Only have to look at Facebook in the 2016 election. And tech companies will continue to grow, and become too big to fail, unless reigned upon as with past crises, like with banks. Only this time, they have all your information, can surveil you, etc, and with AI pretty soon.
- majormajor 3y ago
  Why does it matter that it's entertainment? If at some point consumers have to pay more than they would in a more competitive market, how is that not harm? If you believe that this is a move that will result in less consumer choice and more possibility for MS to extract more $$$$, then you don't like it.
  - midoridensha 3y ago
    >If at some point consumers have to pay more than they would in a more competitive market, how is that not harm? No one HAS to pay for entertainment. It's a pure luxury. There's tons of things you can do with your free time besides playing video games (let alone brand-new AAA console titles): go outside, take a hike, play an instrument, take up a hobby, socialize, learn to cook, write your own software, I could go on and on. You can even do other forms of entertainment with your time: watch a movie or TV series, watch YouTube, watch a sports game, actually play in a sports game, play retro video games on archive.org or in an emulator, etc. All these things compete with (modern Activision) video games for time.
    - swift532 3y ago
      Well if you take it to the point of absurdity, then we only have to maintain a competitive market for grain and water.
      - dnissley 3y ago
        I'm not sure this is absurdity. The point is that no company could possibly have an abusable monopoly on entertainment because A) the sheer variety of things there are to do for entertainment, B) the incredibly low barriers to entry in entertainment, and C) that even if there were some entity that gained control over some significant portion of it, that vast majority of people would just do something, anything else rather than submit to such a monopolist's demands. They might be grumpy about it on some level, but that's hardly rising to the level of consumer harm. You might say there is still the case of some tiny number of incredibly dependent people who would continue playing and paying for certain titles no matter the cost, but that is their decision -- they are not without agency to simply say no, and so even that doesn't rise to the level of consumer harm.

abduhl 3y ago

[flagged]

ahstilde 3y ago
??? How is Lina Khan "pro-foreign-corporation" ?

throwawy1934593 3y ago

I don't think you get how much money is involved in video games now days The last Call of Duty game crossed a billion dollars in 10 days

dnissley 3y ago
Money in itself is not an argument for FTC involvement. E.g. the wedding industry is also enormous, within an order of magnitude of the video game industry in the US.
- failuser 3y ago
  If weddings were monopolized by General Vowes then it would have been a duty of FTC to look into it.
  - dnissley 3y ago
    That's just it though -- video games are not "monopolized" in any meaningful sense. A particular IP may be "monopolized" -- e.g. owned by a particular company that has more or less of an interest in producing cross platform versions. But that's not really a monopoly, is it?
    - failuser 3y ago
      Sony and Microsoft are buying game developers left and right. Will the courts allow Microsoft to buy Sony gaming business? Microsoft is also getting ready to eat Steam’s lunch for a while on the PC side. Will that be allowed to go through?
      - dnissley 3y ago
        > Will the courts allow Microsoft to buy Sony gaming business? Why not? What would it matter to the players on these consoles? Is demand for certain titles so price insensitive that Microsoft could then jack up the price by 100% and people would still buy them? Even if that's true (it's almost certainly not) the barriers to entry in the video game business are extremely low, so this would just create an enormous opportunity and pissed off consumers would jump to a newly created platform.

failuser 3y ago

Games are bigger than most movies. Besides, gaming was responsible for a lot of innovation in computing, we all know how well that will go under a Microsoft monopoly.