The FTC is skeptical about the world’s fourth-largest tech company’s effort to acquire Activision. Microsoft wants to buy the maker of the popular game Call of Duty to gain a footprint in mobile gaming. Gaming now surpasses the movie and music industries combined, with smartphones being the most popular place to game and earning $152.50 billion in 2022. Mobile gaming is the largest- and fastest-growing segment of the gaming market.
Microsoft points to the opposite, citing its incentive to keep offering games like Call of Duty to Sony because two-thirds of the game’s players are on PlayStation and Microsoft wouldn’t want to lose the revenue from those players' in-game purchases. In-app purchases are now often the largest source of revenue for app developers or owners.
More specifically, Microsoft offered to remedy FTC concerns and head off legal challenges by pledging to offer Call of Duty to Sony devices for 10 years, a lifetime in the fast-changing world of gaming. Sony called the offer “inadequate” and continues to lobby regulators around the globe to block the sale.
Khan rose to legal stardom as a Yale Law School student by writing a scathing indictment of Amazon as anti-competitive and arguing for a fundamental rethinking of regulation due to new platform business models in Big Tech. Since being nominated by President Joe Biden, and confirmed by the Senate in 2021, Khan has attempted to institute these changes through rule-making at the agency and bringing unorthodox cases, breaking from the traditional consumer welfare standard.