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Comment by bluescrn | Hacker News Reader

It just seems odd that such an unimportant merger is being so strongly resisted. At the end of the day, videogames are completely unimportant to society (edit: ok, completely non-essential, rather than 'unimportant')

It was rejected by the UK, under a government with a history of privatising critical natural monopolies (railways, energy, water, Royal Mail), no less.

(Meanwhile, the likes of Blackrock and Vanguard are seemingly allowed to pretty much own everything, and manage to remain fairly invisible to average consumers/voters...)

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> It just seems odd that such an unimportant merger is being so strongly resisted.

Videogames are a huge consumer market. Monopolistic behavior will harm consumers.

The fact that other companies in others areas "are allowed to pretty much own everything" is a non-comment. Hypothetical regulatory actions against "the likes of Blackrock and Vanguard" do not preclude regulatory action against Microsoft/Activision.

I'd also add with respect to the importance of the merger: this merger has signaled that Activision's board are looking for an exit. Activision's own long, weird, sloppy history is being the company a lot of other companies exited into. Activision owns an absurd amount of the cultural past of videogames because of its fast and loose mergers and acquisitions game.

In turn Activision have seemed to be dreadful archivists and gatekeepers of the massive amount of industry history that they own. There are Infocom and Sierra and Davidson and Knowledge Associates classics that are still locked in their vaults that can't be legally purchased today. (GOG has done a lot to change that, but there's always still more in the Activision vaults.) Among other things, they've "lost" entire 1990s/2000s franchises that all signs point to them having the legal rights but they have no clue what happened to them ("No One Lives Forever" is a favorite example of some, and the easiest example to mind, but isn't the only example).

There's an importance to them signaling their own interest in exiting here because of that history of exits that Activision already oversaw. Whoever buys Activision next may have an easy bar to clear on being better than Activision was at owning such a large part of the past of videogames. But we don't want to underestimate how much of a gatekeeper versus archivist dynamic is in play of whoever buys Activision or whichever way Activision exits. (If Activision were instead to exit via vultures in one way or another, who knows what will happen to the past of videogames if the raw pieces are all put up for the highest bidder and scattered to the winds. That may be a good thing, or it could mean that even the piecemeal access on GOG to Activision's back catalog is at risk. We wouldn't know until the dust clears and by then it may be too late.)

Preserving digital culture is a legit issue. But it's about copyright laws, not about corporate mergers.

Apple have wiped vast numbers of early iPhone games from existence by having their walled garden and limited backward compatibility. Most early iPhone games, from the 32-bit pre-F2P era will never be played again. But nobody really cares about those.

Much bigger games have been lost too. Many MMOs, in particular, as nobody ever had access to the server-side code. And most modern console games have online components and risk becoming unplayable when the servers are turned off.

Classics from Infocom and Sierra can at least be preserved by enthusiasts, as physical copies still exist and individual fans can ignore the copyright question.

The digital preservation issue extends beyond games, too. We may be entering a future were even books, in their digital form, are frequently updated to fit present-day cultural sensitivities. And without physical copies, it may become impossible to reference the original text, or even know whether edits have occurred.

> But it's about copyright laws, not about corporate mergers.

It's definitely both. I don't disagree with anything you've added.

I'd also add that if we are wishing for copyright law reform ponies, I believe copyright terms are far too long and maybe IP like Infocom's should be public domain already under a far shorter copyright term. (The original US copyright full term was 14 years. That term length would make a lot of interesting videogames public domain today for culture to enhance/expand upon/remix/rebuild/reuse.)

That said, under current copyright law and current copyright terms, the publisher has an extremely heavy influence on what remains in print, so being concerned about corporate mergers is a necessary plight under the current copyright regime. We can wish for better copyright laws and still decry the publishers gatekeeping IP under the existing copyright regime.

>Monopolistic behavior will harm consumers.

Why is buying 1 studio monopolistic?

I have been gaming for decades and I've never felt the need to play games from every studio.

Heck, large studios are mostly a negative in the modern era. They have the resources to use microtransactions and DRM. Meanwhile indie games have to try their best to get any attention.

Even if M$ bought every studio in existence, PlayStation and Nintendo, there would still be indie games in a few years. Not to mention uncountable number of games from the last few decades that is enough entertainment to last you a few lifetimes.

The proposed acquisition is not for "1 studio" but for the entire Activision-Blizzard-King holding company which owns some of the biggest IPs in both the traditional and mobile gaming space, coming just after Microsoft acquired another huge publisher (Zenimax/Bethesda).

Oh noes, guess I'll have to play a different game.

Seriously, IP is not something to worship. There is infinity entertainment. The only thing negative are the people who can't shake loyalty to IP.

Well, good luck with your campaign to sway the entire gaming market and change fundamental human behavior.

If the monopoly is that bad, the market will sway.

But we may already be seeing what you describe with mobile/web/app games and the surge of steam indie games.

Making video games is easier than drilling for oil, and yet there was never an oil monopoly.

> Why is buying 1 studio monopolistic?

Activision is not "1 studio". It is a major publisher of very large videogame IPs.

If the idea is to round up major publishers, "1 studio" at a time, to starve the competition of their suppliers... In what world would that not be monopolistic?

This world.

There is no barrier to entry to video games.

Heck, I made a video game.

If a man makes a videogame, and no one plays it, did he make a videogame?

Contrary, I had all my friends play it.

One of them was addicted and we were supposed to go somewhere and I had to kick them off. Lucky for me, he fat thumbed some way to break the game and his level 283 character was lost to history.

Basically made a crappy text based rpg when I was 16 years old in the first week I learned programming.

except what sell consoles are AAA games and not indie games..

Most people will buy indie games for the console they own and they choose the console based on what their social circle have and what big games are available.

> It just seems odd that such an unimportant merger is being so strongly resisted. At the end of the day, videogames are completely unimportant to society.

That's a $350 billion/year industry. It is a huge part of our society whether you think it is or not.

Regardless, such a large acquisition or merger should always be under scrutiny like this. The government should be protecting its citizens from monopolistic and anti-consumer behavior wherever it may pop up. This acquisition clearly has potential for such behavior.

Blackrock and Vanguard don't own everything. While Blackrock does directly control some assets, Vanguard doesn't. They have a large amount of assets under management, which means they manage assets for other people. If all of Vanguard's clients removed their money, vanguard's assets would be a few buildings in Malvern, PA. Even their votes on the board are because they are proxy voters for the actual owners (the clients), and most people just don't exercise their right to vote on things.

Video games, like cinema, footballs, the olympic games or music, are a huge market, and have strong influence on culture.

In fact, given they now employ people from all the other entertainment industries, and make recurring payments, product placements, and build communities, I'd say they are pretty huge.

This is almost a point in favor of having Microsoft ruin the market.

If we consider that media/marketing driven entertainment is a negative externality, having bad games would cause people to do entertainment that is more akin to their personal interests.

More outdoor time, more reading time, less playing the latest IP from a studio that spent millions on commercials to make an addicting game.

> If we consider that media/marketing driven entertainment is a negative externality

I guess that's the difference here. Most people do not consider this a negative, it gives them more options. You're fooling yourself if you think people would prefer to ditch AAA games and just have obscure indie titles.

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