The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will be reviewing Microsoft's planned acquisition of Activision Blizzard before it's allowed to be finalized. Over the past several years, the FTC has been taking a hard stance against mergers between giant tech companies (see Nvidia's planned acquisition of ARM).
According to a report from Bloomberg, the FTC is taking a lead role in investigating the potential acquisition. This investigation will be done alongside the Justice Department. The purpose of the review is to see if the $70 billion (USD) deal could potentially harm customers and rivals "by limiting their access to the company's biggest games."
It just so happens that on the same day that Microsoft announced the deal, both the FTC and the Justice Department announced plans to toughen merger guidelines. The thought behind the harsher guidelines is to avoid US companies from becoming too "concentrated." The fear is that this could lead to an increase in prices and lower wages.
Though many legal experts say that there shouldn't be too many hurdles to finalizing this acquisition, it is still possible that the FTC will try to put a stop to it.
