The FTC is still trying to stop Xbox from buying Activision Blizzard

Despite losing its pivotal court case, the Federal Trade Commission in the US still insists that Xbox’s deal is a ‘threat to competition.’

Back when Microsoft won its court case against the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in July, it seemed reasonable to assume there was nothing else to stop the acquisition of Activision Blizzard from going ahead – especially after the UK’s CMA gave the deal a provisional go-ahead.

In fact, it’s something of a surprise that Microsoft hasn’t really said anything more about it since then, but perhaps that’s because the FTC hasn’t actually given up yet.

As soon as it lost the case the FTC tried to appeal but the judge for that ruled against them as well, so now they’ve organised a new case with an internal FTC judge.

It’s widely assumed that Microsoft will complete the acquisition before the deadline of October 18, but the FTC’s case will carry on regardless.

‘The FTC continues to believe this deal is a threat to competition,’ said a FTC spokesperson.

According to Bloomberg, the case has little chance of stopping or reversing the acquisition, which begs the obvious question of why are the FTC bothering?

We have no idea, but Activision Blizzard’s snarky response was as follows: ‘We’re focused on working with Microsoft toward closing. How the FTC uses limited taxpayer dollars is its decision.’

As ineffectual as they’ve been through most of this process the FTC does have a lot of power and its blood is up at the moment, with a major investigation into Amazon having recently been announced.

That may have given them the confidence to have one more go at stopping Microsoft, even if it doesn’t seem likely to succeed.

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