The Gamers™ are rising up.

About two weeks back, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that they have filed a lawsuit in an effort to block the $69 billion (USD) acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft. Yesterday, a new lawsuit was filed in an effort to stop this acquisition, this time by a group of Call of Duty players, or "video gamers" as the suit refers to them.

This new lawsuit is a private consumer complaint from 10 players. The suit claims...

Back, the console wars are.

Xbox head honcho Phil Spencer says that PlayStation wants to "protect their dominance on console." He continues on to say, "the way they grow is by making Xbox smaller." These statements by Spencer were said on the Second Request podcast.

Spencer says that Sony just wants to retain its console dominance by opposing Xbox's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. His full statement can be seen here.



Spencer...

The FTC just filed a complaint to stop the acquisition.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of the United States of America (USA) just filed a new complaint today that aims to block Microsoft's $69 billion (USD) acquisition of Activision Blizzard. This complaint is essentially a lawsuit, or a legal block, that will place at least a temporary stop to the acquisition being approved until such a point that this complaint is settled. This news comes in an email that the FTC sent to me this...

Get ready for all your old favorite sites to have a lot of auto-playing video ads!

Fandom, the company that calls itself "the world's largest fan platform," just announced that they have acquired a lot of gaming and entertainment brands from Red Ventures. The sites and services they just acquired include: GameSpot, Metacritic, TV Guide, GameFAQs, Giant Bomb, Cord Cutters News, and Comic Vine.

Fandom's press release announcing these acquisitions wastes no time...

Cross-platform play also confirmed for these Activision Blizzard titles.

Head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, took not to the Xbox Wire page but rather to the official Microsoft Blog to talk about some of the changes and concerns over Microsoft's potential acquisition of Activision Blizzard. In the blog, Spencer tries to put to bed fears that long-standing multi-platform titles like Call of Duty would suddenly become Xbox exclusive.

In the blog post, Spencer also says that franchises...

NetEase moves from being a minority stakeholder in Quantic Dreams to outright owning them.

The Chinese gaming and tech giant not named Tencent is again making acquisitions. NetEase Games, a division of NetEase Inc., have acquired the French development studio Quantic Dream.

Quantic Dream is the studio led by David Cage and Guillaume de Fondaumière. The studio specializes in creating choice-based adventure games that can feature a number of diverging story paths. Some...

The FTC hurdle has still yet to be overcome.

Activision Blizzard stockholders voted today in favor of the pending acquisition by Microsoft. Of course, this really doesn't mean that it's all a done deal just yet as Microsoft still needs to get approval from the FTC and other regulating bodies.

According to a press release sent out today, over 98% of the owners voted in favor of the acquisition. Microsoft is hopeful that the deal will close in their next fiscal year, which...

Several firms are looking to takeover Ubisoft.

According to anonymous sources close to Bloomberg, there are several companies that are looking to potentially purchase Ubisoft. Some of these potential buyers include the world's biggest private equity firms such as Blackston Inc. and KKR & Co.

Bloomberg says that, at least so far, Ubisoft has not yet entered into serious negotiations with any of the potential buyers. A similar report over the weekend by Kotaku says that...

Talks have supposedly not yet happened yet.

Activision Blizzard says that they have not yet talked to Microsoft about what Bobby Kotick's employment status will be after Microsoft's acquisition of the company. As of right now, Kotick is still the CEO of Activision Blizzard despite the numerous legal battles and accusations of sexual harassment and discrimination that have hit the company.

As first spotted by Stephen Totilo, Activision added a line to its United States...

Big tech mergers are of particular interest to the FTC.

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....

Don't threaten me with a good time, Jim.

In speaking with GI.biz's Christopher Dring, Jim Ryan says that PlayStation isn't done with the acquisitions yet. Ryan, who is the current president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, flatly says that "we should expect more" when it comes to further PlayStation acquisitions.

This detail, along with a few others, were shared by Dring on Twitter following GI.biz's report on Sony Interactive Entertainment's acquisition...

You probably thought they were already owned by Sony.

Sony announced today that they have added Bluepoint Games to their PlayStation Studios family. Today's announcement came via the head of PlayStation Studios Herman Hulst in a new PlayStation Blog posting.

Hulst says that Bluepoint has "raised the bar on console-defining visuals and gameplay, and the studio’s vast expertise in world building and character creation will be a huge plus for future PlayStation Studios...

This marks the third time in five years that Jagex has been acquired.

Jagex, the development studio behind the ever popular RuneScape, has just been bought out by the second largest private equity firm in the world, the Carlyle Group. This marks the third time in about five years that Jagex was bought out by a different owner. Less than a year ago, they were bought out by Macarthur Fortune Holding. Prior to that in 2016, they were bought by Shanghai Hongtou Network Technology.
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