It’s Official, The Microsoft Activision Blizzard Merger Is Going Through

It took long enough, but it’s finally happening. After 21 months of inquiries by various government agencies, and multiple concessions and adjustments on the part of Microsoft, the Activision Blizzard merger is finally going through.

Those paying attention probably suspected as much yesterday when a tweet from Destin Legarie indicated that Activision Blizzard stock trading had been halted by some exchanges.

Interesting. Activision shares halted pic.twitter.com/iv72uhLDUx

— Destin (@DestinLegarie) October 13, 2023

Today, the whole thing was made official, following the approval of the UK’s regulatory authority, the CMA. As you might remember, Microsoft’s last concession to the CMA was to have Ubisoft take up the cloud gaming rights of all games involved in the deal – as that was the CMA’s main area of concern. Today the CMA called that concession “a gamechanger that will promote competition”.

Since the CMA’s approval, both Microsoft and Activision have sent out letters to staff and issued official statements online. Microsoft began with the obligatory “Welcome to Xbox” message, complete with a video.

For their part, Activision sent a couple of letters to employees. One just confirmed that the CMA approved the transaction. The second was longer, and addressed one thing many people are wondering about, Bobby Kotick’s involvement in the process and going forward. According to the letter, he has been asked to stay on as CEO and will do so through the rest of the year. That means Kotick will be leaving in 2024.