Boosteroid: There’s No Evidence of Activision Games Joining the Cloud Any Time Soon; CMA Is Slowing Innovation

The surprising final decision of the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority to block the proposed Microsoft/Activision Blizzard merger, a deal worth $68.7 billion, affected other companies like Boosteroid, too.

In an attempt to show that it wouldn’t be foreclosing any cloud competitors, Microsoft signed multiple ten-year deals with platforms like NVIDIA’s GeForce NOW, Boosteroid, Ubitus, EE, and Nware. As part of those agreements, Microsoft agreed to license its Xbox games so that they might be streamed on those cloud services, and the deal also included Activision Blizzard’s titles if the deal closes.

Activision Blizzard’s games haven’t been available on any cloud service since NVIDIA’s GeForce NOW left beta to formally launch in February 2020. At that point, it lost all of the publisher’s games (and many other publishers, too). NVIDIA said at the time it was due to a misunderstanding and that it hoped to get highly popular games like Call of Duty and Overwatch back, but it simply never happened.

There has since been no indication from the publisher that that would change. However, as part of its final ruling, the CMA claims to be sure that will be the case even absent the merger.

I’ve contacted Boosteroid’s Head of Strategic Communications Antonina Batova to petition for a comment on this topic. You can find her official response below.

Antonina Batova: We have no evidence as to that Activision is going to start providing games to cloud platforms in the near future. On the contrary, the cloud gaming community knows that Activision has quite a harsh standing on cloud gaming, which only confirms that most likely they are not going to be available on cloud gaming services in the near future. In theory it is, of course, possible that their strategy has changed, but we have no information about that and would not speculate.

Also, the CMA’s ruling is likely to do the contrary to what they are claiming – slowing the innovation and development of cloud gaming by cutting out the Activision’s audience from cloud gaming services. The situation where this content is widely available in the cloud has clear benefits to the market, the competition and most importantly, to the end customers who would then be able to play high-end Activision games on almost any device regardless of its processing power or OS.

The CMA claimed the positive impact of the aforementioned deals with cloud gaming platforms like Boosteroid was highly uncertain, partly due to undisclosed clauses and provisions in those contracts cited on pages 282 and 283 of the CMA’s final report. When asked about this oddly specific detail, Batova couldn’t expand on the topic but said the CMA could continue to overwatch Microsoft’s commitments.

Antonina Batova: There is no room for extensive comments based on this. We are also not aware of what exactly CMA refers to in these 2 paragraphs but our opinion is that any potential uncertainty “in respect of the future development” may be avoided if the CMA agrees to overwatch the commitments of Microsoft over time directly or through appointed authority.

This will definitely be in the interests of cloud gaming providers. The market and, obviously, the end users benefit greatly from major franchises by Xbox Game Studios and Activision games being widely available in the cloud.

That’s why major cloud gaming providers, including Boosteroid, want the deal to go through.

Indeed, as part of the so-called Microsoft Cloud Remedy, the Windows and Xbox company had offered to appoint a monitoring trustee to ensure compliance with the behavioural remedies, in addition to a fast-track mechanism for disputes. However, the CMA found that it would have placed ‘significant demands’ on its resources and elected to simply block the whole deal.

At any rate, it feels ironic that the very cloud platforms the CMA claims to be protecting, such as Boosteroid, would actually want to get those games very much but won’t be able to if the deal is blocked.

In related news, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer briefly commented on the CMA’s decision while on the Kinda Funny Games podcast. He said the UK regulator defined a cloud gaming market that doesn’t exist yet. Despite the obstacle, Spencer reiterated Microsoft’s intention to fight for the deal’s approval. However, he clarified the acquisition is not the entirety of Microsoft’s gaming strategy, just an accelerant to it.

The next step is the European Union’s decision, which is expected to be made official in late May. Rumors indicate the EU should approve the acquisition.