The drama of Microsoft’s possible purchase of Activision Blizzard continues. Between dimes and bickering, accusations and requests this goes on for a long time. Both parties continue to investigate and request that he disclose information that will supposedly provide a clearer picture to those who will make the final decision.
In January of this year, Microsoft sent a subpoena to Sony as part of its defense process to win Activision Blizzard. The order includes 45 document requests to Sony, including copies of each of the agreements they have with developer companies for exclusives as well as all drafts of any type of related communication.
Of course, Sony tried to get rid of or at least limit the requirements of this order, arguing that the number of requests was irrelevant to the case, expensive, and would unnecessarily consume time.
However, the director of the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) rejected almost all the arguments presented by Sony. Now the company will have to send a copy of all the deals it has done since January 1, 2012.
Sony stated that this information was of no real value and that collecting these documents would require a superhuman effort to manually review over 150,000 contract files to filter out the relevant ones.
For its part, Microsoft said that because the Activision Blizzard acquisition case centers on whether post-purchase access to IP results in Xbox exclusives that will negatively affect competition, then it would be important to understand fully understand how Sony’s exclusive contracts work and the effect they have on its competition in the industry. The FTC agreed with this argument.
In the end, the only request that was granted to Sony was to reduce the date range of its exclusive contracts with developers and now it will only have to present all contracts and communications dated from January 1, 2019.
Via: VGC
Editor’s note: This movie goes on and on, we didn’t reach an outcome, but how has it given us to gossip! What continues to be alarming to me is the ignorance of the authorities regarding the industry. I like to think that at least some effort is being made to understand how things work, so that informed decisions can be made in the end.
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