THE struggle to get Microsoft’s proposed $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard on the line don’t just play government watchdogs and in the public eye, but also in courtrooms. And in one of those battlegrounds, Microsoft is asking rival Sony that it believes the latter constitutes “obvious harassment.”

Via The Axios newslettera series of court documents have been filed over the past two weeks detailing some of the legal skirmishes currently taking place between Microsoft, which is keen to complete the blockbuster deal, and Sony, which is one of many companies and organizations that are absolutely don’t want that to happen.

These particular filings relate to Sony’s attempts to fight the proposed sale, and that as part of their defense, Microsoft has the right to “Discovery,” which is basically letting them get their hands on a bunch of documents and emails from some Sony executives. The two companies have been negotiating for ages over how many executives this will include and the scope of the discovery, but things took a turn earlier this month when Microsoft accused Sony of stalling firstwithout providing all the information they might need:

Sony Interactive Entertainment (“SIE”) – whose gaming business eclipsed that of Xbox for 20 years – is no ordinary third party in this action. At great expense and over an extended period, SIE deployed executive delegations, large teams of outside lawyers, and top economists to persuade regulators here and around the world to block Microsoft Corp.

(“Microsoft”) has proposed the acquisition of Activision Blizzard King. SIE’s efforts are paying off: The FTC’s complaint in this action is replete with allegations about the effects the agreement will have on SIE’s business. This case concerns SIE as much as Xbox and Activision. Rapid discovery of the EIS is therefore critical to Microsoft’s defense.

Although SIE’s motion for an extension of time complains about the magnitude of the subpoena and the length of the extensions already granted to respond to that subpoena, Microsoft has already told SIE that it will consent to a fourth extension of time. to negotiate issues related to the scope of subpoena requests. But Microsoft believes court intervention is now needed on one issue: whether SIE will collect and produce documents from certain custodians.

In response, Sony said they hadn’t provided all of the information requested by Microsoft because they were asked too much, including things like access to internal benchmarks, something Sony says “is obvious harassment”, and that “even in labor courts require a specific demonstration of relevance before requiring the production of personal records.

This is all only moderately interesting, I know, but I’m bringing this up mainly so we can just tie the two together. Microsoft And sony motions, which are full of incredible self-properties, like Microsoft saying that PlayStation’s success “trumped Xbox’s for 20 years,” as well as very funny words in Sony’s filing, like how they say that Microsoft’s subpoena was, like, “really massive”.

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Things haven’t been going well for Xbox lately. Microsoft faces strong resistance in its bid to acquire Activision Blizzard. He hardly released any big exclusive blockbusters last year. And he just cut over 10,000 jobs last week, including many senior developers at the Halo Infinite 343 Industries studio. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer tried to stay optimistic and damage-limiting on each of these and more in a new interview with IGN.

“Every year is critical,” he said. “I don’t find this year more or less critical. I feel good in our momentum. Obviously we’re going through some adjustments right now which are painful, but I think it’s necessary, but it’s really to set us and the teams up for long-term success.

This week has captured both the peril and the promise Xbox faces right now. On Tuesday, Microsoft announced a decrease in net income of 12% for the last fiscal quarter compared to the previous year. Xbox gaming hardware and software have fallen by similar percentages, and Microsoft hasn’t said anything about how many new subscribers its Game Pass service has gained since hitting the 25 million mark exactly one year ago. year.

Then, on Wednesday, Microsoft provided a sleek, streamlined preview of its upcoming games in a Developer Direct livestream copied directly from Nintendo’s playbook. Forza Motorsport has apparently been quietly delayed to the second half of the year, but looked like a beautiful and impressive showpiece of racing sim. Arkane’s Sandbox co-op vampire shooter Redfall has had a May 2 release date. Real-time strategy spin-off Minecraft Legends will arrive in April. And to top it off, Tango Gameworks, creator of The Evil Within, has lost the shadow Hi-Fi Rush on Game Pass, a colorful left-field rhythm-action game that has already become the undisputed top gaming hit of 2023.

Screenshot: Tango Gameworks / Bethesda

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“2022 was too light on games,” Spencer confessed in his IGN interview. 2023 shouldn’t be thanks to Redfall and Starfield, Bethesda’s much-anticipated answer to the question, “What if Skyrim but space?” But both of those games were technically supposed to come out last year. Meanwhile, Hi-Fi Rush, like Obsidian’s Pentiment before that, is shaping up to be a critically acclaimed Game Pass release that might still be too small to move the needle on Xbox’s biggest fortunes.

Spencer remained vague when asked about the success of these games or their impact on Game Pass, whose growth would have stalled on console. “I think creative diversity grows for us when we have different ways for people to pay for the games they’re playing, and the subscription certainly helps there,” he said.

Hi-Fi Rush, Redfall, Starfield and a new The Elder Scrolls Online expansion coming out in June are also all from Bethesdawhich Microsoft finished acquiring in 2021. Microsoft’s former first-party game studios have been relatively silent in recent years while working on their next big projects, or, in the case of 343 Industries, have recently been hit by a number surprising layoffs. .

Following the news of the cuts last week, rumors and speculation began circulating that 343 Industries – which launched a well-received Halo Infinite single-player campaign in 2021 but struggled with seasonal updates of the multiplayer component in the months that followed – was benched. The released studio a brief statement over the weekend saying that Halo was here to stay and would continue to develop it.

Image: Bethesda/Microsoft

Spencer doubled down on that in his interview with IGN, but offered little information about the reasoning behind the layoffs or his plans for the future of the franchise. “What we’re doing now is we want to make sure the leadership team is set up with the flexibility to come up with the plan they need to build,” he said. “And Halo will remain critically important to what Xbox does, and 343 is critically important to the success of Halo.”

Where Halo Infinite has been touted before 10-year plan fits into this, however, remains unclear. “They have other things, some rumored, some announced, that they will be working on,” Spencer said. And on the future of the series as a whole, he simply said, “I expect that we will continue to support and grow Halo for as long as Xbox is a platform for people to play. ” It’s hard to imagine Nintendo talking about Mario with a similar lack of conviction.

Microsoft’s ongoing difficulties with some of its internal projects may be part of the reason it’s so focused on seeking help outside of the company. Currently, that means trying to acquire Activision Blizzard for $69 billion and fighting an antitrust lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission in the process. Microsoft originally promised that the deal to get Call of Duty, Diablo, World of Warcraft, and Candy Crush would be done before the end of summer 2023. That deadline is fast approaching, even as the company continues to offer compromises, as would have given Sony the option to continue paying for Activision’s games on its rival Game Pass subscription service, PS Plus.

Spencer told IGN that he remains optimistic about closing the deal, even though he claims to know nothing about the logistics of doing so when he started a year ago. “Given that a year ago, for me, I knew nothing about the process of making an acquisition like this,” he said. “The fact that I have more insight, more knowledge about what it means to work with the various regulators, I’m more confident now than I was a year ago, just based on the information I have. and discussions we had.

Photo: Christian Petersen (Getty Images)

The video game market is consolidating like never before, and Electronic Arts is hustling like everyone else. the Battlefield and Fifa The manufacturer recently pursued a merger with NBCUniversal and also held potential acquisition talks with Disney, Apple and other companies, according to a new report from Puck. While no deal is currently in the works, it doesn’t look like EA is planning to give up anytime soon.

“In recent years, as media companies have taken more interest in the growing gaming industry, Wilson and Electronic Arts have held interviews with a number of potential suitors, including Disney, Apple and Amazon, telling me sources familiar with these discussions said,” wrote veteran Puck reporter Dylan Beyers. emboldened following the Microsoft-Activision deal. Others say EA is primarily interested in a merger deal that would allow Wilson to remain chief executive of the merged company.

But it was apparently a deal with NBCUniversal that went the furthest. According to Beyers, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts was seeking to spin the entertainment conglomerate into a separate entity with EA, a version of the deal that remains current. EA CEO Andrew Wilson in charge of the new mega-company. Negotiations ultimately broke down over the price, however.

*dun-dun*

“We do not comment on rumors and speculation relating to mergers and acquisitions,” EA spokesperson John Reseburg told Kotaku in a statement. “We are proud to operate from a position of strength and growth, with a portfolio of incredible games, built around powerful IP, made by incredibly talented teams, and a network of more than half -billion players We see a very bright future ahead of us.

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Read More: Private equity eyes Ubisoft as next big gaming acquisition

Over the past year, there has been a frenzy of video game studio acquisitions, one that accelerated in January after Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two announced that it bought Zynga. for $12.7 billion and Microsoft announced plans to buy Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard for 69 billion dollars. Sony followed up weeks later with a deal to buy the studio behind Destiny 2, Bungie, for $3.6 billiona price that some analysts saw as massively inflated and possibly a sign of another mad rush for consolidation among the biggest players in the gaming industry.

During an earnings call in February, Andrew Wilson hinted that the company was focused on making acquisitions rather than acquiring. For proof, EA spent $5 billion last year it bought studios to increase its size. But now it looks like the publisher has aggressively pursued other ways to grow. Beyers reports that Wilson approached Disney as recently as March “looking for what sources described as ‘a more meaningful relationship’ than licensing deals.”

This news comes as EA has lost or dropped some of its biggest existing licensing deals. As the publisher recently revealed three new Star Wars games currently in productionincluding a new Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order which is early 2023 release rumor, its exclusivity agreement with Disney for the Star Wars license will not be renewed when it expires in 2023. This has allowed competitors like Quantic Dream and Ubisoft to announce their own big Star Wars projects. EA also revealed last week that it was ending its similar 10-year exclusivity agreement with FIFA and that from 2023, to rebrand its successful football franchise EA Sports FC.

Whatever the future of EA, one of the main concerns about consolidation is its ultimate impact on the employees of these companies. Even though EA reported another profitable year, Kotaku recently learned that an estimate 200 customer service employees are laid off. According to four of the affected employees, their work is outsourced to cheaper third-party vendors in Romania and India.

Comcast, Disney and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Image: Activision Blizzard

Today, Activision Blizzard fulfilled its daily oopsie quota by blogging about how the publisher’s affiliates apparently used a special tool to help develop more “diverse” characters. He apparently thinks he can accomplish this without, I don’t know, talking or hiring marginalized developers. Why rely on pesky, fallible humans when we have powerful data to tell us we’ve reached enough diversity points to start a new video game culture war? The numbers don’t lie. I mean, look at this. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The well-designed graphic says it all, clearly and calmly.

Damn, I’m glad that technology allows us to solve racism, sexism, ableism and all the other problems facing video games. Who knew it was so easy? When former Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan said he “would hate for diversity to ever feel flattering, like we just had this spreadsheet with a bunch of checkboxes,” Activision Blizzard really took that to heart. Alright, not really.

I’m being sarcastic, but in many ways it’s hard to contain how maddening it is. It’s not just that anyone thought such a complex problem could be solved with a glorified Dungeons & Dragons character sheet that makes no sense. And it’s not just that Blizzard is in the midst of a slew of ostensible “diversity” disasters right now, including allegations of sexual harassmentinability to recruit or retain marginalized talentand persistent union tensions.

But a number of people probably not only built this thing, but also wrote the blog, got interviewed for it, and then signed it off to share it with everyone. The reaction on the internet to the post and the tool it describes has been utter disbelief, and rightly so. Consider the fact that no one there saw this coming, amidst all the other complete PR disasters. What does this say about Activision’s real ability to address the endemic issues that have come under public scrutiny over the past year and that the publisher has repeatedly pledged to to resolve ? Right now, it looks like no one in charge is really capable of that, if that’s what they’re offering.

And make no mistake, this is a public relations disaster. I’m not just saying this because I disagree with the basic premise that you can, as the blog post states, use a handy, practical tool to magically “dissect their own assumptions” and quickly, avoiding “token characters” and achieving “true representation” by identifying “more diverse character narratives” that go beyond “mere appearance”. Humans struggle with these things not because we We’re mere mortals who can’t understand the primitive logic of 1s and 0s, but because getting to a better world is a painful process. You can’t speed it up. The moment you try to take a shortcut is the when you are no longer engaging with the real problem.

While addressing these issues may involve tools, Activision Blizzard has proven time and time again that it’s at the stage where it needs more education, guidance, and mentorship from real people with skills. non-technical to help establish a basic understanding of what diversity means before you can even think. on creating a tool like this. When a company like this it takes years to introduce a black woman in a video gameI cannot believe in good faith that he has the ability to “measure” what diversity is or means, let alone implement it well.

But even if we take the thing in itself, it makes no sense. Can you look at any of the visualizations shared in the blog post and tell me what they might mean?

Screenshot: Activision Blizzard

I guess there’s some logic to this, maybe logic that’s only explained and known to people who regularly use the tool, but even suggesting that you can list something like “capacity” is completely silly. What is ability 0? What does it mean when the image in the blog post says someone has “sexual orientation: 0.357”?

How can you put that in front of someone and not feel weird about what you did or what you say?

While hardly significant, the use case examples cited in the blog post will not be compelling to the average person. There’s Call of Duty Vanguard, a game that Activision not only tried to distance himself from, but the one that friends actively hate because it has diversity. Then his other example is Overwatch 2, a game that almost everyone asks, “Why does this exist?“Are these just reasons to set something aside? No, certainly not. But they add to the top of an already crappy pile. Nobody’s gonna say “Ooo, they used that to the Call of Duty that disappointed everyoneAgain, the levels of marketing failure here are unfathomable.

So yeah, it’s not the most compelling way to package what’s already a tough sell for people who want change but don’t think it can be achieved through representation alone. Nor for those other people who think just putting a woman in a video game is inherently too political.

But maybe it was inevitable. Technology is in many ways the most extreme manifestation of whiteness and capitalism, structures that actively invest in defining, codifying and ranking markers of identity in order to maintain power and profit. The marginalized are seen only when useful, and then only in the most degrading terms, for shitty ends. Identity is key to achieving these goals. After all, if you can develop a system for, say, defining things like gender or race, you can use that information to “inform” broader choices, like making sure your character designs are diverse from more complex way.

In reality, more often than not, such data is used to monitor, imprison and monitor identities that are put under the microscope, often by people outside their own communities. In this case, whether the entities collecting the data realize it or not, its most direct effect will be to better equip them to deflect criticism from the very parties they claim to want to hold accountable. It’s funny how it works.

Why hire more people of color when you have software that already tells you what to consider, or worse, that might make you think you already know what is what? Do you really have to think about your biases if the character you created spits out a 3, 4, and 5 on the computer’s diversity scale? Those are some pretty good numbers, man! Now that we’ve sorted that out, it’s time to spend some quality time develop realistic horse balls. Polish is king.

“The traits and metrics are applicable to broader entertainment verticals, including TV, film and literature,” the blog post read. “The only change required if used in these verticals would be the base traits, which would need to be calibrated to be relevant to the genre and universe in which each character exists.”

Activision Blizzard’s blog post ends by saying that ultimately it’s just a tool, and ultimately it’s always up to the people behind the wheel to make the choices. But not before betraying a more grandiose vision of a world that lives under the influence of its tool, and therefore of its master logic.

Image: Volition/Deep Silver

The video game industry is currently undergoing a tidal wave of consolidation, and Swedish holding company Embracer Group is using it to become one of the newest players in a rapidly shrinking space. A few years ago, most people had never heard of it. Now it’s bigger than rivals like Ubisoft and Capcom, and should get even bigger as it goes. picked up Square Enix’s Tomb Raider Studios and Marvel’s Avengers.

I wish there was a succinct way to explain what Embracer is and where it came from, but there isn’t. It started as a nesting doll of investment companies that started out in retail. It’s now a vast network of independent publishing branches and individual studios that make and sell every type of game you can imagine. The brainchild of Swedish businessman Lars Wingefors, Embracer was created in 2011 and bought out other game companies since.

It was originally called Nordic Games Holding and grew out of Wingefors’ previous experience in selling excess video game inventory to the international market. Instead of selling EA’s remaining games, Nordic eventually decided to start selling their own. First, he seized the assets of the Austrian publisher JoWooD (Gothic, SpellForce) during a bankruptcy in 2011, then in particular many leftovers from THQ (Darksiders, Homefront) in 2013, after which it was rebranded as THQ Nordic.

At the time, it looked like grave robbery, but perhaps even less lucrative. By now, it’s clear that Nordic Games’ ambition went far beyond just being a THQ zombie and giving the world Darksiders III. The holding company went public in 2016, renamed Embracer in 2019, and now has over 100 studios and publishers housing more than 10,000 employees, making it bigger than Activision Blizzard in terms of body count.

Pretty much the only thing the band did besides buy stuff was hold a sharply reprimanded the 2019 AMA with 8Chan. “I condemn any unethical content that this website represents,” Wingefors later wrote in its apology. “While no one within the THQ Nordic Group would ever endorse such content, I realize that simply appearing there implicitly felt like we did.”

Monday’s $300 million deal to acquire Crystal Dynamics (Deus Ex), Eidos Montreal (Guardians of the Galaxy), and Square Enix Montreal (Hitman Sniper) is one of Embracer’s most high-profile deals to date. . Along with securing the rights to things like Thief, Legacy of Kain, and over 50 other “back-catalog games” (i.e. Gex), the sale would also see Embracer’s ranks swell by 1,100 other game developers. But in purely monetary terms, it would be one of the smallest checks that Embracer investors have cut in recent years.

Here’s who else he recently bought:

April 2020: Port house Saber Interactive for $525 million February 2021: Borderlands maker Gearbox Entertainment for $1.3 billion April 2021: Ad-supported mobile game publisher Easybrain for $640 million April 2021: Star Wars Remaster Aspyr Media machine for 450 million dollarsAugust 2021: 3D Realms and seven other studios for 313 million dollarsDecember 2021: Asmodee, French publisher of board games and RPGs for 3 billion dollars

While mega publishers like EA and Activision rely on selling tens of millions of copies of a few annualized franchises, Embracer has been busy buying dozens of baskets and stuffing a few eggs into each. Its subsidiaries publish everything from Biomutant to World War Z. It owns 4A Games, which makes the post-apocalyptic Metro series, as well as Dambuster Studios, which made Homefront: The Revolution, and is the latest studio to be cursed with development. of Dead Island. 2, a sequel that’s been MIA for eight years. As well as reclaiming old THQ properties (it bought Kingdoms of Amalur in 2018), it added new independent studios behind cult hits like Ghost Simulator and Little Nightmares.

If you want to get a sense of the scale of Embracer’s acquisition rabbit hole maze, consider the mind-blowing case of the upcoming Saints Row reboot. The parody series of GTA was created by Volition, the famous studio behind Descent, Summoner and Red Faction. THQ acquired Volition in 2000. When THQ went bankrupt in 2013, Volition was sold to Koch Media and became part of Deep Silver. Summoner and Red Faction were sold to Nordic Games. In 2018, Nordic Games finally bought Koch Media as well.

In addition to reuniting old gaming IPs, Embracer attempted to reform long-defunct studios. Free Radical Design was formed by developers who worked on GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark for the Nintendo 64 in 1999. In 2000 it released TimeSplitters. In 2008 it went bankrupt and was sold to Crytek. It went terribly, and eventually all that was left was sold to Koch Media. Last year, Embracer reformed Free Radical Design with the original founders Steve Ellis and David Doak to bring the “much-loved” TimeSplitters IP back to life.

When THQ went bankrupt, it seemed like a sign that there was no more room for midsize publishers in an industry dominated by first-party staples and $100 million blockbusters. Embracer’s strategy seems to confirm this. Instead of trying to be king of the hill, he’s going to be king of the rest. It rarely releases major games, but one of its bets occasionally hits big like 2021’s Viking survival sim Valheim.

Who knows how it will work. Hopefully this means the developers at Eidos Montreal can keep their four-day work week and we will eventually have another Deus Ex who does not have the fortune of an entire company on his shoulders.

Picture: Ubisoft

Private equity firms could start circling Ubisoft, Bloomberg reported Friday. The talks are early, but include interest from companies like Blackstone Inc. and KKR & Co. While not private equity, current and former Ubisoft developers Kotaku has engaged with interviewed over the past few months believe the company will eventually sell to someone in the midst of a falling stock. price and ongoing production struggles.

Bloomberg reports that Blackstone and KKR & Co., the world’s two largest private equity firms, have “investigated the French business” and have “a preliminary buyout interest” in Ubisoft, but the company has not. yet concluded “any serious negotiations with potential buyers.

According to Kotaku’s sources, Ubisoft has worked closely with several external consulting firms in recent years to audit various parts of its business. While companies will do this to become more profitable and prepare for the future, sources Kotaku spoke to suggest this is a sign that Ubisoft is trying to put its books away for a potential sale.

On a flurry of recent major game acquisitions, including Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two buy zyngasony buy Bungieand Microsoft’s $69 billion deal to absorb Activision Blizzard, it looks like a game of eat or be eaten for those left behind. EA CEO Andrew Wilson said as much during an earnings call earlier this year, in which he placed the FIFA publisher firmly in the camp of “big fish looking to eat game”. other fish”.

Ubisoft has been more timid about its survival strategy. When asked on his last earnings call why the French publisher had apparently received no interest in the offer, chief financial officer Frédérick Duguet said he would not speculate on why any offer had been made, before being corrected by CEO and co-founder Yves Guillemot. The company, says Guillemot, neither confirms nor denies “if” potential buyers had approached him.

Beyond Good and Evil 2 has been bleeding money and MIA for years. Picture: Ubisoft

If someone wanted to buy Ubisoft, they would potentially get it at a huge discount. The stock was above $110 per share in July 2018. It is now at $41. But they would still need to go through the Guillemot family, which is currently estimated at 15% of the market capitalization company of just under $5 billion.

CEO Yves Guillemot celebrates repelled a hostile takeover attempt by French media conglomerate Vivendi after securing funding from Tencent and others in 2018. But some current and former sources within the company now believe the 35-year video game industry veteran may be seeking an exit strategy.

They point the departure of his son Charlie Guillemot last year which means that there are no more parents to take over the family business. Ubisoft was also hit by a continuous wave of attrition among his senior talents. He continues to struggle with the aftermath of a consideration in the workplace for sexual misconduct which began in the summer of 2020. And some of its biggest projects continue to face upheaval, delays, or being trapped in development hell.

Like Bloomberg communicated in February, Ubisoft has decided to turn one of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s planned DLCs into a standalone interim game instead to help fill holes in its release schedule over the next 18 months. In the meantime, the next Far Cry, Ghost Recognitionand full-fledged Assassin’s Creed games remain further away than Ubisoft previously anticipated, according to three sources familiar with their development.

When asked for comment, a Ubisoft spokesperson sent Kotaku the following statement:

We do not comment on rumors or speculation. Ubisoft has unrivaled creative and production capabilities, with more than 20,000 talented people collaborating in our global studios on game development. Thanks to them, our long-term approach and our appetite for creative risk-taking, we have built some of the strongest proprietary brands in the industry and have many exciting new brands and projects on the horizon. We also have one of the industry’s most comprehensive and diverse portfolios of cutting-edge services and technologies, and a large and growing community of engaged players. As a result, we are uniquely positioned to capitalize on the rapid industry growth and platform opportunities that are emerging right now.

Correction: 4/23/22, 1:51 PM: A previous version of this article referenced the wrong Ubisoft stock symbol.

Photo: Pool (Getty Images)

Activision Blizzard Chief Administrative Officer Brian Bulatao (above) sent an email to all employees of the company earlier today, informing them that “with immediate effect” the editor was removing the requirement for employees working in offices of be fully vaccinated against Covid-19, and hope everyone will be working in person again in the coming weeks.

Bulatao says that as “businesses and other indoor locations across the United States lift vaccine requirements…we believe it’s important to align our site protocols with local guidelines.” The main reason for this is clearly employees’ desire to return to the “benefits of in-person collaboration” as early as June, although some employees also see the move as an opportunity to monitor staff more closely. as part of management’s anti-union efforts.

There is also a security risk; as the email says, “we know the situation is constantly evolving and we will continue to monitor the risks of COVID-19 in all areas where we operate”, which seems like a massive understatement when the New York Times publishes articles like “A new wave of Covid-19 is coming”in part because the full immunization rate among American adults is still a relatively low 66%.

While the email says the company will “act quickly – and pivot if necessary – if we see a future spike in cases”, for those who cannot return to the office for health reasons, or simply choose to fail to do so in the face of the dangers involved, the email states “you may have personal circumstances that you would like to discuss with your manager and HRBP” (we contacted Activision Blizzard for more information on this).

You can read the email below, first shared by ABK Workers’ Alliance Jessica González:

March 31, 2022

Bcc: US employees

As conditions improve and we prepare to welcome you back to our offices, I would like to share an update regarding our vaccination policy. Effective immediately, we are lifting our vaccination mandate for all US employees. This means that employees no longer need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to return to the office.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen businesses and other indoor venues across the United States lift vaccine requirements, and we believe it’s important to align our site protocols with local guidelines. . While this policy change responds to our current state of the pandemic, we know that the situation is constantly evolving and we will continue to monitor the risks of COVID-19 in all areas where we operate. I encourage you to check out this FAQ, which should help answer your questions.

Although proof of vaccination is no longer required to return to the office, we ask that you continue to confirm your vaccination status in Workday by following this link. Having this information readily available will allow us to act quickly – and pivot if necessary – if we see a future spike in cases.

We recognize that returning to the office is different across our business units and even within our business units. We also recognize that different sites are in varying stages of return. While this change may not have an immediate impact on those still working remotely, we wanted to communicate it now so you have plenty of time to prepare.

Over the next few weeks, you will receive additional updates on what returning to the office looks like from your business unit or site manager. While we look forward to your return, we recognize that you may have personal circumstances that you would like to discuss with your manager and HRBP.

As we define what the future of work looks like, I want to remind us all of the benefits of in-person collaboration. In order to ensure that we all have a safe workspace where we can gather with colleagues and innovate together, it is essential that we remain committed to protecting ourselves and others.

Thank you for your patience and understanding during this time.

brian

Photo: FREDERIC J. BROWN (Getty Images)

Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard was new capital today, both in terms of the magnitude of the case and its shock value. But we shouldn’t be too surprised. It was inevitable. A handful of companies have always wanted to own it all, and nothing will stop them.

The proposed sale – the technicalities dictate that I must remind you that it has yet to be approved – involves some shocking numbers. $70 billion is counterfeit money, a fictitious sum normally reserved for national budgets and defense agreements. The union of these two companies, with all these properties and all these games, alongside a home console and a massively popular subscription service, instantly changed the entire shape of the video game industry.

But a deal like this was always going to happen sooner or later, and if it wasn’t Microsoft and Activision, it would have been Sony and EA, or Tencent and Ubisoft, or someone else buying something else. Because that’s how it works. Video games are trapped in the same hellish systems as everything else on this planet, and are subject to the same cruelly unfair, almost dystopian rules.

It’s all about money. All. It’s all about steady growth, rising stock prices and dividends, while everything for us as people who love to play games gets worse, from exploitative microtransactions to shoddy launches in going through the looming threat of NFTs.

It’s like Microsoft just can’t help it, despite the fact that they’re already literally the second richest company on the planet, a company that already makes video game consoles, was already a publisher of games, already owned game studios and had already made some of the biggest games on the planet. They couldn’t help it because there is no rest for the rich. Corporate inertia means that there is no satisfaction in being big enough, or powerful enough, or rich enough, when there is always the possibility – and shareholder demand – of having more.

It’s almost comical that Microsoft spent $70 billion on a company called Activision Blizzard King, the result of mergers between three previously independent (and hugely successful in their own right!) companies coming together just to make money for some investors. , only for this company. eventually redeemed. There is always a bigger fish!

Remember that this is not a normal purchase. There is simply no precedent for a sale of this magnitude in the video game industry. Biggest previous acquisition before this one was the $12 billion paid by Take-Two for Zynga… earlier this month. The biggest before that was the $8 billion Tencent paid for Supercell. Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard is in a whole different stratosphere.

To put it into perspective, both financially and culturally, it’s a “Disney buys Pixar and Star Wars and Marvel” storyline. Disney’s monolithic domination of popular culture over the past decade has been absolute, and it sucks. He was there for all to see for all these years, screwed up everything from the rest of the film industry to the theaters and that’s the kind of large-scale deal that’s now happening for games as well video, like this grim reaper meme going door to door.

Look at the ongoing consolidation in other industries. Amazon is devouring every store in America and crushing entire cities under its feet. Google and Apple know everything about you, sell all the ads on the planet, and kill the media along the way. Almost anything you buy at a grocery store owned by only ten companies.

It’s boring and it’s dangerous (monopolies are ironically terrible for a free and open market), but even gloomier than the economic realities is the fact that in a system where only the pursuit of profit matters, there is no there is no room for justice. Bobby Kotick deserved to be kicked out of Activision with nothing. Instead, he’s going to leave at sunset with more money than we could ever hope to spend – for on top of the obscene sums he’s already made– and will not suffer any repercussions for his role in promoting and protecting a company-wide culture of harassment that lasted for decades.

What really pissed me off today, however, wasn’t this deal itself – as I said, it was happening, regardless of who was involved – but what it means. It’s not a shock one-time purchase, where every other company involved in video games just sits back and thinks, wow, that’s bad news for us, but we’re just going to carry on as if nothing happened and hope for the best. No, because this system is sick and deranged and the only impetus left for competition is to do the same, consider this:

It’s the future. There’s no way boardrooms everywhere from EA to Ubisoft to Sony won’t be full this week with panicked executives talking about their options for something similar, because their only instinct will be to match that. To keep up, make the stock price go up, until there are only 2 or 3 companies left at the top of the food chain, and things get a little worse for the rest of them. ‘between us. Because they don’t know anything else.