The consolidation of the gaming industry will be just another tale of oligopoly in a capitalist society I guess. Yaaay.
this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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We're heading towards the balkanization of all digital content, DRM is the method they will use to enforce their rule.
Piracy isn't just moral at this stage, you're obligated to participate as a means to resist.
Despite not pirating PC games due to not wanting to risk viruses I am very invested in the cracking scene, since they lead to positive outcomes of some companies removing DRM earlier if a crack comes out. Used to be they'd just be left in indefinitely. Thank you pirates.
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The indie industry is also growing a lot these days
Agreed, besides for a few companies in the triple A space the indie scene has grown so much to the point where I don’t feel like I’m missing out on great gameplay, stories, and/or graphics anymore.
Yeah, it's exploded so much that compared to the past there's an overwhelming amount of options now. It's led to being harder to stand out and make a hit compared to the past, but also shows how much the barrier to entry has fallen.
I think everyone saying market consolidation is bad is missing the point for this particular one.
This isn't Google buying and killing another product. This isn't AT&T buying and merging something. This is the failed company Activision that bought Blizzard and tarnished its name and branding once again being sold off.
What's more, this is (effectively) the death of Activision. The bane on gaming since it first started mouthing syllables to the words "corporate profits".
I can only really see this as a good thing from pretty much any angle you try to look at it from. The fact that the only thing all the comments here have to say is that "consolidation bad" should be very telling. I'm no fan of Microsoft, but they generally let departments have a vision and execute them. They seem to have less awful stories than most tech cultures, so one would imagine that going from managers who don't care or are actively participating in hazing you to a place where you are given the space to foster your creative ideas... I'm gonna say this consolidation is probably a good thing if only because of the small chance that the workplace culture changes. In regards to the company, there may even finally be a litany of IP have a chance of seeing the light of day again!
Time will tell of course but I'd say all you need to do is read the timeline. The last decade has been nothing but awful actions from Blizzard leading up to the buyout, ranging from people doing multiple different boycotts against them for Blitzchang to their now parent company Activision just going full 1970. Microsoft will never be a golden pinnacle of perfection but they haven't been fostering workplaces where people feel fear and have their freaking bodily fluids stolen.
I guess I'll put it this way. Would you rather have the execs behind CoD and WoW or would you rather have the execs behind Halo and Starfield?
Both suck but one is clearly trying to allow space for heart to exist while having lots of skeletons and decomposing corpses in the closet while the other is whipping its junk out and rubbing it in your face while laughing about making skeletons... too much? lol
"Execs behind Starfield"
The same execs that bought the company already half way through development of Starfield, and rather than delivering anything new or of value, only wanted to make sure it was extinguished on other systems?
As for "execs behind Halo," the less said the better. I've never seen a series driven so hard into the ground.
Okay there... And before thay Sony was trying to lock Starfield away on their side so what's your point? The current market is driven by exclusives thanks very much to Sony and Nintendo.
And Sony and Nintendo aggressively want to push towards proprietary hardware exclusives. Sony has improved in that area, but every exclusive is still a big question on if it'll even be available on the PC and if so when. Just the long release schedule is an attempt to draw more people who can't wait to a proprietary closed ecosystem.
I would argue there's a huge difference between, say, one year of timed exclusivity for one game, versus buying an entire publisher and making every single one of their future games exclusive.
On the flip side those who really dislike hardware locks requiring specific devices to run games would see a console only exclusive a bigger concern.
Since viewed from PCs it isn't just a Microsoft game, but one that can be played on Linux with Proton and possibly MacOS with their game porting toolkit with various different hardware configurations as opposed to a locked down proprietary one.
Once Sony shows a much bigger effort to embrace open hardware options as opposed to trying to funnel people to their proprietary one with unknown status of future ports I will be less wary of their attempts at acquisitions. And well Nintendo never will.
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It’s almost certainly a positive to see Bobby Kotick (boy do I struggle to maintain this site’s cardinal rule as far as he goes ) losing influence in the “AAA” games industry; but it’s not good to see MS buying every studio they can get hold of. Both these things can be true simultaneously.
My biggest concern with MS’s rampant acquisition spree is what happens when there’a an economic downturn (as already seems to be the near future); will those newly acquired studio be subject to the corporate euphemism that is ~dOWnSiZiNg~? How many working on moderately niche titles will be out of a job and their work indefinitely shelved?
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Forza. That’s it. They weren’t behind Fable, they weren’t behind gears of war, they weren’t behind halo. Microsoft has nothing to show here. Every developer they’ve bought in the past has turned out nothing special afterward, just sequels of diminishing quality.
only wanted to make sure it was extinguished on other systems?
I hope you're similarly malicious about Sony's exclusives too.
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To be clear, overall I don't disagree that more consolidation is bad. It's literally just this instance. Activision needs to die and be restructured.
lemmy needs an op indicator
What do you mean? There is an OP indicator (I mean, at least Liftoff shows one).
It does (on the website -- if you're using an app, that's on your app creator). OP simply hasn't replied to any comments in the thread yet. Last I saw, kbin was missing the OP indicator, but that shouldn't affect you on beehaw.
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Yeah, this is like watching two bad parents fight for custody of a child. Microsoft is ab-so-lutely going to limit the reach and quality of this game off their own system. They might fulfill the letter, but their intentions are clear.
My main argument against the acquisition is that the morons behind Activision/Blizzard will get a ridiculous payout
These people should get a lifetime ban from executive positions, not a payout
Your comment made me step back a minute, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I tend to agree with your assessment after looking at this scenario more closely. I'm no fan of Microsoft but Activision isn't exactly a great studio. Only time will tell!
I play only one game from Acti-Blizz regularly which is CoD, since most of my friends play in religiously (time for new friends?). And it is treated so badly by Activision, I hope MS fixes this. I know all the highbrow arguments against consolidation. But I don’t care for Diablo or WoW (sorry) and the one game I play can only win from MS acquisition (impossible to treat it any worse). So I personally want this to go through already.
Seriously though? They bought Bethesda and look what they're doing there. Now they get to add another massive developer as if they weren't already ridiculously huge? This monopoly stuff has to end. I don't just mean gaming either. Like 5 companies control our entire food supply. There can only be one internet provider in any area. It's insane.
This is the inevitable conclusion to free-market based economies. The market will pick winners, and those winners will then have a capital advantage over all new entrants, allowing them to outcompete anyone they want, and to use their size to control the market at large. It’s literally built into the system. The attempts at reform we try are rolled back eventually, and we end up in the same place again. Ma Bell broke up, and for a while we had competition across the industry and innovation. Eventually, market leaders were picked, and we end up where we are now, with few options, and little difference between the ones we have.
Oligopoly, not monopoly. Monopoly implies there's just 1 company. In gaming there is far from one company.
This monopoly stuff has to end.
Microsoft aren't a monopoly, especially in gaming. Even buying ABK they won't be even remotely close to a monopoly.
MS isn't even top 2 in a hardware market of 3. They're not even top 4 in publishers either. Hardly a monopoly.
On one hand this just means further consolidation of an already oligopolic industry. On the other hand, Activision is a terrible company run by a terrible man, so it's not like things could get much worse.
It's not really about Activision being bought though, it's about Microsoft buying them.
To be honest, this is why I've been of two minds regarding the whole thing.
ActivisionBlizzard needs a complete structural change. That's not going to happen without someone else acquiring them, which they were seeking out themselves.
That it's Microsoft who did that kind of sucks, but if not them, it probably would have just been someone like Embracer who's also currently consolidating a lot of IP. Tencent is another option.
If Sony acquired them, it would have led to the same fight, only it'd be Microsoft complaining.
I understand why Microsoft is probably one of the worse options here, due to Game Pass and having their own console, but I don't think there was ever going to be a good outcome for everyone here. It was ActBlizz who wanted to sell and it was never going to be a cheap acquisition.
Some other deal would have gone through (and be challenged), and I think people would still have issues with it regarding their market share.
Microsoft are the best option by far.
Sony wouldn't, and shouldn't, be allowed to buy them even if they could afford them. They're the market leader and we know they would make everything exclusive straight away.
The only other options are companies like Embracer, Tencent, Amazon, or Apple. None of them would be good. Microsoft are basically going to maintain the status quo, while opening up the games to more people on more services.
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I think to many of us, Microsoft is definitely the best option for someone buying Activision/Blizzard. They have been willing to give new life to old IP, they have given purchased studios freedom and support to follow their projects and take the time needed, they bring games to both PC and console and now many more platforms with Cloud Gaming, and they have a generally professional work culture.
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As primarily a Playstation and Nintendo gamer, I think this acquisition is going to be 99% bad news for me. Oh well.
Can I ask why? Microsoft has a monetary incentive to push the games to other platforms wherever possible. Yeah they may hold a few back (see Starfield) to try and sell consoles but I don't expect them to withhold all. There were some interesting articles that this deal is more about the mobile gaming (King) rather than COD or other AB games.
As an Xbox and Nintendo owner I feel Sony/Nintendo have done more harm to the industry by reinforcing exclusives (both times and complete) than Microsoft. Wouldn't it be in Microsoft's right to do what the market leaders are doing and take advantage of exclusives to try and gain market share back? We also saw with testimony/discovery during the trial that Sony would often say one thing publicly and another internally. I think Sony only opposed this cause they wanted to stoke the fire of fandoms.
Microsoft are no longer interested in selling consoles necessarily, otherwise they'd be holding stuff back from PC as well. They're interested in getting people into their ecosystem through Game Pass.
And while I agree with you that Sony and Nintendo have used plenty of anti-consumer practices, Microsoft has also done so in the past and I think the only reason they've been more pro-consumer of late is because they've been the underdog for a long time now. I would be anticipating a change in their behaviour the more people they get to subscribe to Game Pass, and this Activision-Blizzard deal is a huge step towards that.
Exactly. Sony have spent years leveraging their market leading position to further put them in the lead via paying to keep content and games off Xbox. Their market position is their strength and they leverage it. Microsoft's strength is their financial power, and they're now finally leveraging it. Sony need to be pulled back to the pack and pulled in line with their anti-consumer practices. The more market share and dominance they get the worse they get for consumers, as they've shown many times.
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Boooo. Competition is always better in capitalism. Even Activision blizzard as terrible as they are, is competition. No one should be happy about this after how they've gobbled up a huge chunk of the gaming market.
How long until we're forced to log into these games with Microsoft accounts and pay for Xbox live
I'd like to see this go through just to get Bobby Kotick out.
This is just the fight for the preliminary injunction. The FTC can still use antitrust proceedings to prevent/unwind the merger.
We often forget that big companies have been broken up before.
When was the last time that happened? It's not really a thing anymore in our current environment.
According to this article, in the US, it looks like 1982. It was AT&T. But it looks like they are currently trying to break up Meta.
I thought Microsoft had split too, but they mention that in the article and say they never actually split. I thought Intel was also split at one point, but it's not listed here, so I'm probably wrong.
Antitrust suits result in more varied options than just breaking a company up. Microsoft had to have certain aspects of it's operations supervised by the Department of Justice for years, and had to make mandatory changes with respect to browser bundling that only ended with Windows 10/11.
Intel has settled some antitrust actions -- namely lawsuits by AMD -- with money and cross-licensing agreements. They've spun off some divisions and operations over the years but none forced that I can recall.
Honestly I can't remember the last game I played from Activision/Blizzard. I know this is bad because market consolidation is bad. But I think this will have no impact on my gaming.
It would be funny if sony decided to release their games for pc only for linux, just to spite microsoft.
Slim chance of it happening, but one can dream.
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