It’s a great day for consumer choice worldwide, as a ruling has been issued out of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California from Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, denying the Federal Trade Commission’s request for a preliminary injunction to halt the acquisition of Activision-Blizzard by Microsoft.
“The FTC set out it seems, to protect the business interests of Sony’s PlayStation, completely ignoring their duty to regulate in the interest of American consumers. Judge Corley called out the FTC on it during the hearings and has delivered a sharp ruling here that will allow the deal to go forward,” said Stephen Kent, Media Director for the Consumer Choice Center. “President Biden should be taking note of how poor FTC Chair Lina Khan has been at her job, and how far she’s strayed from the mission of consumer protection.”
After five days of hearings involving the FTC, Microsoft, Activision-Blizzard, Sony, and Nintendo, Judge Corley pointed out on the final day that the FTC had fallen short of providing a consumer interest to justify blocking the deal, saying “This is about harms to the consumer, not to Sony.”
“The Consumer Choice Center is excited to see gamers win this case brought by the FTC, because they are indeed the real winners in Microsoft coming together with a top-notch game developer like Activision-Blizzard,” added Kent.
The deal has one more hurdle to clear in the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, and we have confidence that they too will join the rest of the world’s consumer protection agencies in letting the acquisition deal close by its July 18th deadline.
Read the ruling here
