The Federal Commerce Fee claims Microsoft misrepresented its plans for Activision Blizzard as the creators of Skylanders have their offices sold off.
Even though the deal went through last year, the US Federal Trade Commission is still trying to stop Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard, with their main argument being that they could still choose not to release games, including Call Of Duty, on rival platforms.
That was back in December though, before rumours that some, perhaps most, Xbox games will be going multiformat, with Microsoft set to host a ‘business update event’ next week.
If Microsoft is making Xbox more multiformat then that will hurt the FTC’s case, but their new angle is that the 1,900 job cuts that were announced across the Xbox business last month go against what Microsoft promised last year.
The FTC’s argument is that before the acquisition Microsoft claimed that Activision Blizzard would operate largely independently, but that the job cuts, which are at least in part a result of job duplication at Microsoft, prove this is not the case.
‘This newly revealed information contradicts Microsoft’s representation in this proceeding, which seeks to temporarily pause Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision pending the FTC’s evaluation of the merger’s antitrust merits.’ says the FTC’s filing to the US Court of Appeals, as highlighted by Charlie Intel.
Importantly, Microsoft agreed to ‘keep the pre-merger established order’ of Activision Blizzard, which the FTC is arguing they aren’t doing by chopping so many roles and drastically decreasing the variety of employees at some studios.
Not that it helps the individuals which are shedding their jobs, however the FTC’s case might be strengthened by the truth that Microsoft has simply offered off the places of work of developer Toys For Bob.
Whereas the studio has not technically been shut down, all of the employees at the moment are being compelled to do business from home – much like how Sledgehammer Video games have been handled within the preliminary spherical of layoffs.
Toys For Bob is a smaller studio although and the San Francisco Chronicle experiences that 86 employees have been laid off this week, on prime of the 54 that already misplaced their jobs throughout the preliminary spherical of redundancies.
Toys For Bob has been round for 35 years and was initially finest identified for the Star Management franchise, earlier than being purchased by Activision in 2005. They noticed appreciable success with the Skylanders collection of toys to life video games, which for a time have been much more worthwhile for Activision than Name Of Obligation.
Very similar to Guitar Hero, the collection was rapidly run into the bottom and whereas 2020’s Crash Bandicoot 4 obtained largely constructive critiques it was not the success Activision anticipated and as a substitute Toys For Bob was became a assist studio for Name Of Obligation.
They did additionally launch the reside service title Crash Group Rumble final 12 months, however that was additionally a failure, making them a main goal within the present spherical of redundancies.
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