Microsoft’s $68 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard has garnered intense backlash from rival company Sony and government regulators across the world. With the Federal Trade Commission’s latest involvement, the acquisition has faced another hurdle; however, recent problems with the FTC’s lawsuit have come alight.
In its lawsuit the FTC claimed that the acquisition would give Microsoft the means to manipulate and suppress Activision’s franchises and pricing towards other consoles, pointing to the example of Microsoft lying to the European Commission about the exclusivity of its previous acquisition ZeniMax’s titles following that deal’s closing. However, in a quick turn of events, the regulatory body’s counterpart across the pond has allegedly countered its concerns.
In a recent statement to the news agency MLex, the European Commission claimed that the FTC lied. ResetEra user Idas reported the news on its forums due to the original article being behind a paywall.
“Microsoft didn’t make any ‘commitments’ to EU regulators not to release Xbox-exclusive content following its takeover of ZeniMax Media,” said the European Commission. “The commission cleared the Microsoft/ZeniMax transaction unconditionally as it concluded that the transaction would not raise competition concerns…”
The article concluded that if Microsoft were to restrict access to ZeniMax titles, their wouldn’t be a major impact on competition.
Wccftech contacted Idas for proof original article and the European Union for official confirmation. The FTC has yet to respond to the European Commission’s statement.