The soap opera of Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard is nearing its end. The Xbox company readjusted the terms of its proposed acquisition to address concerns of the UK authorities, who had stymied the deal. Under the new terms, the cloud gaming rights to Activision’s games would be sold to Ubisoft.
“We have restructured the transaction to acquire a narrower set of rights,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, said in a statement posted on the company’s website.
According to Smith, the new proposal transfers to Ubisoft all streaming rights to Activision’s current titles, as well as games released over the next 15 years. These rights will be held by Ubisoft on a permanent basis.
In practice, this means that Microsoft will not have exclusivity of Activision’s games on Xbox Cloud Gaming — it will need to license them with Ubisoft, as if Activision were not its own.
Ubisoft, in turn, may license Activision’s games to other cloud gaming services.
The company has already announced that it will include these titles in Ubisoft Plus Multi Access, a subscription that entitles you to several games and is available for PC, Xbox, PlayStation and Amazon Luna.
Obviously, Ubisoft isn’t going to take Activision’s rights to the cloud for free. According to Smith, the company will make a one-time payment, with wholesale price at market values.
UK to consider Microsoft’s new proposal
The change in the terms of the Activision Blizzard purchase agreement attempts to resolve the regulatory imbroglio in the UK. This pendency is the last barrier to sacrament the acquisition.
Most of the world’s regulatory authorities have expressed concern about the exclusivity of Activision’s securities. If they were limited to the Xbox, there could be some market concentration.
These issues, however, have been resolved. On the one hand, Microsoft has shown that it is well behind Nintendo and Sony in the console market. On the other, she made deals with the two contestants so that they would have access to the studio’s games.
In the UK, the situation was different. The Markets and Competition Authority (CMA) considered that by buying Activision, Microsoft put itself at a huge advantage in the fledgling cloud gaming market. So she blocked the deal.
By relinquishing the licenses of the studio’s games, Microsoft tries to show that this will not be a problem. The CMA will review the new terms before deciding whether or not to release the purchase.
