Microsoft Wins Crucial FTC Case on Activision Blizzard Acquisition

https://www.eurogamer.net/microsoft-wins-crucial-ftc-case-on-activision-blizzard-acquisition

I wonder if that would eventually pave the way for Heretic 2 to be released on GOG.  Doesn't Activision hold publishing rights to that game?

Finally 

I'm multiplatform, so I have no real skin in the fight, although I'm not necessarily a fan of industry consolidation in general. I'm hopeful that this willl enable rereleases of some games that have otherwise been lost to time. Xbox now owns both Raven and id, so hopefully when the dust settles we'll see Heretic II on digital storefronts (maybe even ports?). This should also sort out the legal guff surrounding Wolfenstein 2009, so hopefully that will be relisted too (actually, it has always confused me that Quake 4 isn't on Xbox back-compat, yet Prey 2006 is despite both games being on the same engine. Can't see it being added now for the sake of one game, but a remaster perhaps?).

What has been fun though is watching the fanboy meltdowns and memes over the past 24 hours. Console wars are bad, kids.

This sucks. Anybody celebrating this really seriously needs to think about why. Consolidating power especially like this is a net bad for everybody involved regardless of "console wars" or whatever.

Right now 87% of video games released before 2010 are unavailable outside of either piracy or tracking down rare copies. With Microsoft acquiring Activision that number's only going to get higher.

they're called an antitrust because you cannot trust them to stop total monopolization 95% of the time

20 minutes ago, indigotyrian said:

Anybody celebrating this really seriously needs to think about why. Consolidating power especially like this is a net bad for everybody involved regardless of "console wars" or whatever.

I don't know, having id Software and Raven Software under one umbrella seems pretty useful for the game franchises this community is a fan of.  I know it's a bit of a selfish point of view and there are arguably better ways that deadlock could be solved (selling Raven's non-CoD IP to Microsoft).  But as far as I can tell for the set of games I care about the merger would actually run counter to your claim of "games would become lost."

1 hour ago, indigotyrian said:

Right now 87% of video games released before 2010 are unavailable outside of either piracy or tracking down rare copies. With Microsoft acquiring Activision that number's only going to get higher.

If the percentage is already that high, this merger is unlikely to move the needle all that much. I mean, for all of their faults, Embracer have been reissuing quite a lot of old games they acquired the rights to, and Big Phil is on record stating Xbox's intention to follow suit.

My concern is what happens to those IPs going forward, considering titles like Halo Infinite, State of Decay 3 and the current turmoil besieging the Perfect Dark reboot...

1 hour ago, indigotyrian said:

This sucks. Anybody celebrating this really seriously needs to think about why. Consolidating power especially like this is a net bad for everybody involved regardless of "console wars" or whatever.

Idk you but if this brings back a return of Hexen, Heretic and Guitar Hero i'm in.

Also, is so funny to see Sony fanboys melting down after all the shitshow ftc and Sony Made about monopoly... Like is not like that Sony is the closest to be a monopoly in the gaming (and anime btw) industry lol

Personally I'm looking forward to...whatever they might be able to do with Warcraft III: Reforged given how even Age of Mythology: Extended Edition was a mile better of an RTS update.

1 hour ago, Herr Dethnout said:

Also, is so funny to see Sony fanboys melting down after all the shitshow ftc and Sony Made about monopoly... Like is not like that Sony is the closest to be a monopoly in the gaming (and anime btw) industry lol

And mere hours after the verdict, suddenly the CMA wants to "negotiate" XD

I am mixed about this. On one hand, I am glad to see Sony getting a taste of their own medicine (seriously, have we forgotten how much Sony paid studios to make certain games exclusive to their platform in the past).

On the other hand, consolidation and mergers are rarely ever a good thing.

This kind of market concentration was inevitable. With the constantly rising budgets it is very clear that only very large and powerful companies will still be able to compete in this market.

We may like it or not, but this wasn't the last merger in this business.

10 hours ago, Blzut3 said:

I don't know, having id Software and Raven Software under one umbrella seems pretty useful for the game franchises this community is a fan of.  I know it's a bit of a selfish point of view and there are arguably better ways that deadlock could be solved (selling Raven's non-CoD IP to Microsoft).  But as far as I can tell for the set of games I care about the merger would actually run counter to your claim of "games would become lost."

Yeah; really not a fan of Microsoft getting to be even bigger as it was already far too big IMO.

But I guess this way there's a hope of seeing Portals of Praevus, Heretic II, and Wolfenstein 2009 get out of licensing hell. Hard to say that it's a fair trade, but that's something.

10 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

I am mixed about this. On one hand, I am glad to see Sony getting a taste of their own medicine (seriously, have we forgotten how much Sony paid studios to make certain games exclusive to their platform in the past).

 

On the other hand, consolidation and mergers are rarely ever a good thing.

"The past"?

Final Fantasy 16 much?

4 hours ago, Kes Gaming YT said:

"The past"?

Final Fantasy 16 much?

They're literally doing since the first Playstation...

3 hours ago, Herr Dethnout said:

They're literally doing since the first Playstation...

Exactly. Past, present, and most likely, future.

As someone who buys physical releases, and can afford to have all the platforms, I love timed exclusives.  (Also not really concerned about playing games day 1.)  The delayed release sometimes includes DLC and of course pre-patched so more of the game is actually on the disc.

The FTC has become unbelievably toothless. Just another case of the broken corporatism of modern United States.

And the FTC's last-ditch appeal has been rejected:

https://www.eurogamer.net/ftc-appeal-denied-as-microsofts-activision-acquisition-nears-completion

As someone who couldn't care less about CoD and wouldn't shed any tears if the entire concept of cloud gaming died in a fire, I'm just hoping this gets wrapped up soon so everyone can go back to speculating about new Nintendo hardware like every other month for the past 6 bloody years...

15 hours ago, scalliano said:

And the FTC's last-ditch appeal has been rejected:

 

https://www.eurogamer.net/ftc-appeal-denied-as-microsofts-activision-acquisition-nears-completion

 

As someone who couldn't care less about CoD and wouldn't shed any tears if the entire concept of cloud gaming died in a fire, I'm just hoping this gets wrapped up soon so everyone can go back to speculating about new Nintendo hardware like every other month for the past 6 bloody years...

If Switch ends being the best selling console of all time (now is the third, second if only counts home consoles), then officially Sony has loss everything. lol

On 7/12/2023 at 6:19 PM, Blzut3 said:

I don't know, having id Software and Raven Software under one umbrella seems pretty useful for the game franchises this community is a fan of.  I know it's a bit of a selfish point of view and there are arguably better ways that deadlock could be solved (selling Raven's non-CoD IP to Microsoft).  But as far as I can tell for the set of games I care about the merger would actually run counter to your claim of "games would become lost."

Games aren't being lost because publishers don't have the rights to re-release them, they're being lost because copyright law is a twisted horrible mess that, particularly with video games, utterly sunders efforts to preserve and protect them for future study and enjoyment. Did you know that the Entertainment Software Association has been consistently stymieing archival efforts because, according to them, "the industry already does enough to preserve its history?"

Corporations and especially game publishers do not give a single hot fuck about you, about gaming as a cultural form of expression, about old video games, or even about current video games apart from what can make them the most quarterly financial gains. Nintendo proved that when they killed the 3DS eShop and doubled-back to kill some of the more common ways to CFW the 3DS, for absolutely no financial reason (if piracy is bad because it hurts sales, then how is it possibly so wrong when it's happening on a platform you're making $0 on?) beyond forcing people to focus on New Shiny.

I do not care that Heretic and Hexen are now under the same conglomerate as Doom and Quake. At the very most that means we might get a Night Dive re-release of those games, maybe, if someone high up decides it might be a good idea. Anybody excited at the prospect of old games getting re-released (or heaven forfend a sequel) because of this acquisition should take a look at what happened to a whole bunch of movies and television shows after Disney acquired Fox.

1 hour ago, indigotyrian said:

Nintendo proved that when they killed the 3DS eShop and doubled-back to kill some of the more common ways to CFW the 3DS, for absolutely no financial reason (if piracy is bad because it hurts sales, then how is it possibly so wrong when it's happening on a platform you're making $0 on?) beyond forcing people to focus on New Shiny.

 

Nintendo is the best evidence to me that you can be the worst company ever, as long as you are able to appease the general audience at the same time.

Nintendo could literally blow up a hospital tomorrow as long as they released Mario 12 the next week. Moral of the story, support smaller companies.

1 hour ago, indigotyrian said:

 

Games aren't being lost because publishers don't have the rights to re-release them, they're being lost because copyright law is a twisted horrible mess that, particularly with video games, utterly sunders efforts to preserve and protect them for future study and enjoyment. Did you know that the Entertainment Software Association has been consistently stymieing archival efforts because, according to them, "the industry already does enough to preserve its history?"

 

Corporations and especially game publishers do not give a single hot fuck about you, about gaming as a cultural form of expression, about old video games, or even about current video games apart from what can make them the most quarterly financial gains. Nintendo proved that when they killed the 3DS eShop and doubled-back to kill some of the more common ways to CFW the 3DS, for absolutely no financial reason (if piracy is bad because it hurts sales, then how is it possibly so wrong when it's happening on a platform you're making $0 on?) beyond forcing people to focus on New Shiny.

 

I do not care that Heretic and Hexen are now under the same conglomerate as Doom and Quake. At the very most that means we might get a Night Dive re-release of those games, maybe, if someone high up decides it might be a good idea. Anybody excited at the prospect of old games getting re-released (or heaven forfend a sequel) because of this acquisition should take a look at what happened to a whole bunch of movies and television shows after Disney acquired Fox.

+1 fellow non-supporter of copyright

Copyright is a joke: it can't protect authors nor their work as along as people are able (read: pressured) to surrender its managing to companies.

Even with them under the same roof it doesn’t mean anything much is going to happen with these IPs. People get way too hopeful. “Ooh Spencer wore a HeXen shirt… is this a sign?” Get real!

2 hours ago, Herr Dethnout said:

If Switch ends being the best selling console of all time (now is the third, second if only counts home consoles), then officially Sony has loss everything. lol

The console business is just a tiny portion of Sony. They'll be just fine.

44 minutes ago, Antkibo said:

Copyright is a joke: it can't protect authors nor their work as along as people are able (read: pressured) to surrender its managing to companies.

And if they weren't able to do that, a lot of software you are using would not exist!

Yes, it is surely bad how this affects games, but do you have any idea what it means if the copyright of company-developed software belonged to the employees writing it? It'd be entirely unsustainable for any software development company out there.

Copyright itself is not the problem - the problem here is that the same rules are applied as to books or movies, which simply does not work for software. The expiration times are far too long.

1 hour ago, Gez said:

The console business is just a tiny portion of Sony. They'll be just fine.

I know, but it will be funny cuz Playstation fans take this kind of things seriously heh

3 minutes ago, Herr Dethnout said:

I know, but it will be funny cuz Playstation fans take this kind of things seriously heh

I don't get it, how can they obsess over a console with no games????

2 hours ago, Mr Masker said:

Nintendo is the best evidence to me that you can be the worst company ever, as long as you are able to appease the general audience at the same time.

 

Nintendo could literally blow up a hospital tomorrow as long as they released Mario 12 the next week. Moral of the story, support smaller companies.

The best example is Pokémon Scarlet and Violet...

Nintendo can literally sell you shit in a package and still it will sell well...

Even worse when you know that Nintendo granted refunds (they never do that) cuz it has poor perfomance and bugs... And yet sell 10 million copies at the time... Wtf

2 hours ago, FecalMystAche said:

Even with them under the same roof it doesn’t mean anything much is going to happen with these IPs. People get way too hopeful. “Ooh Spencer wore a HeXen shirt… is this a sign?” Get real!

Perhaps for people hoping for a sequel or whatever.  In my case I really don't care about the trademarks.  For example as far as I'm concerned Overload is a part of the Descent series it doesn't matter to me that it doesn't have the literal trademark (and there we got some of the original developers).  Especially true for Heretic/Hexen where the games literally used different marks anyway.  That's not to say if a game using the trademarks was green lit I wouldn't be interested in seeing it, just that in my mind having the name slapped on a new game isn't important.

What I have a hard time believing is that Portal of Praevus is missing from digital stores for any reason other than either 1) it wasn't worth the time to negotiate with Activision, 2) Activision wanted too much, or 3) Activision was unwilling to negotiate a deal for whatever reason.  I assume Wolfenstein is in a similar camp where there's probably a split rights situation and the expected returns make it not worthwhile.  I would think it's very likely these two games would return if owned by a single party.  Heretic II on the other hand I'm not sure why they wouldn't have been able to make a re-release of that happen (unless there's some non-obvious ownership of the Heretic name), so I'm not super hopeful for that.  However being able to bundle with the rest of the series would probably make a stronger business case so there is a chance it could help.

2 hours ago, Antkibo said:

Copyright is a joke: it can't protect authors nor their work as along as people are able (read: pressured) to surrender its managing to companies. 

Having everyone involved retain their copyright would be a great way to make sure stuff never gets re-released.  Would increase the amount of legal work that needs to be done to make such a release happen, plus overhead in managing the distribution of royalties.  This kind of thing is already a big reason why games with things licensed music or real world brands tend to get pulled from digital stores and never re-issued.