The CoD War Ends
Call of Duty is the best-selling first-person shooter game series ever. Since the original instalment in 2003 over 400 million copies of the games have been sold to fanatics and casual gamers alike. During that time the games have appeared on a diverse range of platforms including even the Blackberry and Nokia N-Gage!
Given that a large part of the franchise’s success has always been the diversity of platforms, many worried that this might not be the case for much longer. Microsoft, owner of the Xbox platform, are currently attempting to take over Activision Blizzard, the publishers of the Call of Duty series.
If Call of Duty became an Xbox exclusive then that would go a long way towards establishing a monopoly for Microsoft. Sony PlayStation is still a major player in this market (the critically-acclaimed Final Fantasy XVI was exclusive to that platform) but would surely fall behind in the West. Microsoft has already acquired Bethesda (another major studio) and Starfield (a highly anticipated title due to be released in September this year) will be exclusive to Microsoft platforms.
Instead the agreement, announced this weekend, between Microsoft and Sony that Call of Duty will remain available on both platforms for at least ten years will make critics and regulators alike feel a little easier about the prospect of a takeover. As time goes on the deal feels more and more like an inevitability.
Previously the Federal Trade Commission in America had sought an emergency block on the deal as it attempted to launch a challenge but that was struck down last week by a California judge who did not believe that the regulator would be successful. In the UK I previously reported that the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) had come to the conclusion that the agreement, worth $68.7 billion (£55 billion), would be bad for gamers in the UK and stifle innovation in the industry. That decision was appealed and we will find out the result in a few weeks time. Meanwhile the European Union has already rubber-stamped the deal.
In both the U.S. and the UK, the fate of Call of Duty was cited as a concern but will now be less problematic given the nature of the deal that has been struck.
That is not to say that the deal is suddenly now beneficial for competition because one game will be cross-platform. The CMA cited a range of issues that reach beyond Call of Duty but the most pressing is about the future of cloud gaming services. While Microsoft has struck deals on this front as well to try and alleviate fears, those deals are much more limited in scope and have not impressed the UK regulator.
It might well be that the UK folds to international pressure and accepts the deal as a fait accompli but the CMA should not feel like it has to. In practice these legal decisions are much more akin to negotiations and here the regulator is in a powerful bargaining position. If they can force Microsoft to guarantee much more meaningful concessions when it comes to cloud gaming then gamers across the world would stand to benefit.
This week on the podcast we look at a case that considers the extraterritorial effect of legislation. In other words, what are the circumstances where the laws of the UK can apply overseas?
Episode link: https://uklawweekly.com/2023-uksc-23/
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