Despite the major victory for both Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, it looks like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is not going to back down just yet. The FTC has officially filed an appeal challenging the verdict of the of their recent trial that took place within the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. This trial, in which Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley ruled in favor of Microsoft, denied the FTC’s request for a preliminary injunction which would have been another huge step back for the two video game giants in regards to finalizing the formers massively huge acquisition of the latter.

BREAKING: the FTC has filed an appeal against Judge Corley’s decision to deny its preliminary injunction request over Microsoft’s proposed Activision Blizzard acquisition https://t.co/jvtufsEaed

— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) July 12, 2023

The appeal, which can be viewed here, is fairly barebones at the moment, and will only have specific arguments once it makes its way to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. As we mentioned earlier, Microsoft won a significant victory this week when the judge ruled in their favor and rejecting the FTC’s injunction. Judge Corley stated in her ruling that the FTC failed to prove that the deal would be anti-competitive. She also added that “the FTC has not identified a single document which contradicts Microsoft’s publicly-stated commitment to make Call of Duty available on PlayStation and Nintendo Switch.”

However, the real situation that Microsoft now faces is that with the appeal officially being filed, this will cause the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to issue an emergency stay to extend the current temporary order that prevents the company from attempting to complete its acquisition. The order was set to expire this week on Friday, July 14 at 11:59 PM PST. The reason why this is now a problem for Microsoft is because the deadline to complete the purchase of Activision Blizzard is fast approaching, next week in fast on Tuesday, July 18.

Should Microsoft fail to make the deal official by that day, they will be forced to pay Activision Blizzard $3 billion. This will also potentially make the acquisition reopen for renegotiation, which could completely change the aspect of how much it could end up costing. On top of that, now that the appeal has been filed, the FTC’s injunction will continue as planned and has a set date for August 2. It’s not confirmed if the appeal’s court will even hear the case before the deadline, or even before the injunctions date, all of which makes for a terrible time situation for Microsoft. Oh and if all that wasn’t enough, they still have to contend with the U.K.’s antitrust regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority, which officially blocked the transaction back in April.