“The Commission is carefully assessing whether developments in the UK require further notification to the Commission,” European Commission spokeswoman Ariana Podesta said in a statement. the edge.
Another notification to the EU could signal another revision of the deal that regulators at the European Commission approved earlier this year. While the EU had concerns about cloud gaming just like the EU, it got the remedies as part of that approval, giving EU consumers a free license to stream via “any cloud game streaming services of their choice” for all existing PC and console games. and Futurism from Activision Blizzard. that they have a license to. Cloud service providers will also be given a free license to broadcast these games in the EU markets.
At the time of that approval, Microsoft also, in Tweet from Microsoft President Brad SmithThese licenses will “apply globally” and will be “automatically applied to competing cloud gaming services”. While Microsoft says the restructured deal will not affect Microsoft’s obligations to the European Commission, Ubisoft will now control licensing outside of EU markets.
In effect, this means that the cloud gaming service can start in the European Union with a free license, but will now need Ubisoft to give it a license if it wants to operate in the United States, for example. Microsoft had planned to freely apply these licenses globally, but now it is ceding cloud gaming rights to Activision Blizzard to Ubisoft outside the EU.
The restructured deal means that if Microsoft closes this proposed acquisition, it will also need to acquire a license from Ubisoft for Activision Blizzard games on the Xbox Cloud Gaming service outside of the European Union. You will not be able to release Activision Blizzard games exclusively on Xbox Cloud Gaming, nor will you have exclusive control over the license terms of Activision Blizzard games on competing services.
UK regulators are already treating this as a new deal, with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) opening a new deal Phase One investigation. In this restructured transaction. Microsoft will now need to wait and see if the European Commission also needs an update notice for the deal and more regulatory issues.
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