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Comment by hospitalJail | Hacker News Reader

>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.

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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.

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