Three years after suing to block Microsoft from buying one of the biggest names in video games, the U.S. government is finally giving up. The FTC announced plans Thursday to drop a Biden-era case against Microsoft over its $69 billion acquisition of game maker Activision Blizzard, a decision the regulator said now best serves the public interest.  In 2022, the FTC first announced that it would try to kill Microsoft’s planned acquisition of the gaming giant, which makes hit games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. The following year, after the FTC failed to secure a preliminary injunction to stop it, Microsoft actually finalized the massive deal, but the regulator vowed to continue appealing that decision.  Earlier this month, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s order denying the injunction, ruling that the FTC’s claims that the deal would limit competition in the gaming industry were weak. The acquisition was destined for intense scrutiny from day one, both for its size and its potential to totally reshape the landscape for one of tech’s hottest sectors.  Microsoft swooped in to save Activision Blizzard from itself When Microsoft announced its plan to buy Activision Blizzard in January 2022, the smaller company had been rocked by emerging allegations of systemic sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Those ongoing scandals eventually forced longtime CEO Bobby Kotick out of the company as Microsoft cleaned house leading into the merger.  Microsoft also had to clear major regulatory hurdles in the U.K., resolving antitrust concerns there over its cloud gaming services before getting the green light to close the deal. That bit of regulatory maneuvering resulted in an unusual arrangement to offload cloud streaming rights for its games to competitor Ubisoft in order to appease the Competition and Markets Authority, the U.K.’s powerful trust buster. (This portion of the deal isn’t great news for anyone who’s wrestled with Ubisoft’s awkward online gaming service over the years.) A boost to Microsoft’s online gaming roadmap By bringing Activision Blizzard under its wing, Microsoft can also bring the company’s many hit titles into the popular Xbox Game Pass service, which gives players unlimited access to games for a monthly subscription fee.  Gaming companies have increasingly turned to monthly subscriptions and live service games over the last decade and many of Activision Blizzard’s hit franchises revolve around online multiplayer, including Call of Duty, Overwatch, Diablo and World of Warcraft. Activision Blizzard also owns Candy Crush, a colorful tile-matching game that’s still synonymous with mobile gaming almost a decade after Activision Blizzard bought its developer King for a then whopping $5.9 billion. Microsoft President Brad Smith described his company as “grateful” to the FTC for its decision to allow the acquisition to settle. “Today’s decision is a victory for players across the country and for common sense in Washington, D.C.,” Smith said.

As Memorial Day approaches and National Military Appreciation Month comes to a close, here’s a timely fact: the largest private funder of veteran employment in the United States is a video game. Tied to Activision’s long-running military game franchise “Call of Duty,” the aptly named Call of Duty Endowment (C.O.D.E.) has placed over 150,000 veterans in jobs since 2009 and has been surpassing the federal government’s placement efforts since 2022, according to the organization’s president, Dan Goldenberg. Related Stories The initiative has raised $48 million through sales of special accessory packs in “Call of Duty” games alone (one of which recently launched in collaboration with real-life vets First Sergeant Korey Staley and Captain Florent “Flo” Groberg), in addition to other donation streams, and “every cent of which is going to putting vets in jobs,” Goldenberg says. Popular on Variety “The ‘Call of Duty’ community has been generous. Activision, as partners, have been incredible. They’ve all kind of come together in this ecosystem,” Goldenberg told Variety. “And one thing I know for sure is we’ve had more measurable social impact than anyone I know of in the gaming industry. I can’t think of another cause where it’s not so much the money raised, it’s the impact out. Others may have raised more money, but we’ve put — including the in-game stuff and other donations and corporate partnerships — close to $100 million against this problem. And as a result, 150,000 vets have jobs, their families are more secure. Meaningful employment is just so core to so many other challenges a vet may encounter. If you have a meaningful job, you probably have health care, you have colleagues, you have purpose.” According to C.O.D.E., it costs $628 per placement of each vet. The average starting salary for vets in these placements is $75,000, and 93% are receiving full-time placement. Goldenberg says the program has seen an 89% retention rate at six months. Additionally, 20% of the program’s veterans placed are women. Launched in 2009 by former Activision chief Bobby Kotick and co-chaired by General James L. Jones beginning in 2012, the Call of Duty Endowment started out a time when the unemployment rate for veterans “was super high,” Goldenberg said. “It stemmed from this very successful gaming franchise that said, ‘We’ve gotten really big, and we owe a lot of our success to the people who inspired us. We’d like to find a good way to give back to them,'” Goldenberg said, adding that “initially, we looked like a lot of corporate foundations writing big checks. But the difference was the discipline that had made Activision and ‘Call of Duty’ so successful was being applied to trying to solve a social problem here.” C.O.D.E. is currently bracing for a higher number of unemployed veterans amid the recent job cuts across government service, a popular sector for vet placement, under the administration of President Donald Trump. But Goldenberg says the techniques the endowment already has in place — methods it has been building on through years of trial and error — will help significantly with this influx. “A lot of it was vetting our partners, and we insisted on a return on our investment,” Goldenberg said. “The difference was, it was a social return. We wanted to see a lot of vets put in jobs. And when we started, we were at parity. Our cost per placement was about the same as the federal government’s efforts.” And with “consistent disciplined vetting and accountability of our grantees on a quarterly basis,” Goldenberg says the Endowment has pulled ahead. “It works. So last year, we placed vets in jobs for 1/15th the cost of placement of the government with much higher quality outcomes in terms of average starting salary, retention rates, and the percentage of those jobs that are for full-time employment,” Goldenberg said. “And I guess the big lesson out of it is the discipline of business can really make a big difference for social cost. That’s been our unequivocal experience. We didn’t go in for brands. We looked for nonprofit partners who we thought for the dollar could accomplish the most social impact, and that’s what we’ve gotten.” As for how the actual “Call of Duty” video games can help vets, a study done by the Entertainment Software Association found that 86% of surveyed U.S. vets said video games provided them with a “healthy outlet for stress and anxiety.” “And not surprisingly, ‘Call of Duty’ is their favorite game,” Goldenberg says of the study’s findings. “When I’ve talked to friends who’ve been forward, when I’ve gone forward, you would think, and people from outside will say, ‘Don’t you get enough of the military thing?’ And no, it’s like a great way for them — especially when we were in active combat, people would come back to the forward operating bases, and they use it to decompress and have fun,” Goldenberg says.

TikTok is in an exceptionally tough spot these days. Despite everyone you know using it for hours on end, the video-sharing app is currently facing legislation that would force its ban in the U.S pending a potential sale, and prospective buyers are lining up. One of these potential buyers is reportedly Bobby Kotick, the former boss of Activision Blizzard, according to the Wall Street Journal.Suggested ReadingWhy This Under-the-Radar AAA Title Is More Than Just A Far Cry Clone Share SubtitlesOffEnglishview videoSuggested ReadingWhy This Under-the-Radar AAA Title Is More Than Just A Far Cry Clone Share SubtitlesOffEnglishTikTok has been scrutinized for years by U.S. lawmakers who have argued that its China-based parent company ByteDance may share data it collects with the Chinese government, or that the app could serve as a propaganda delivery tool. Despite tensions ramping up some time ago, leading many to believe that the app would be banned in the U.S., matters had seemingly cooled until a bill was pushed through the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week, ratcheting up the pressure on ByteDance. The bill is expected to be reviewed and approved by the House of Representatives this week before being sent to the Senate, and President Joe Biden has already claimed he would sign off on a ban if the bill made it through legislation.The bill requires that ByteDance “divest itself” of TikTok or see the app banned in the U.S., which has led to renewed interest from potential buyers, including Kotick. Kotick, according to WSJ’s sources, has floated the idea of a buy to ByteDance’s co-founder and is reportedly looking for partners, which could include Sam Altman of OpenAI. According to the Wall Street Journal, “OpenAI could use TikTok to help train its AI models if a partner such as Kotick could raise the capital for such an acquisition.” TikTok’s sale has been estimated to be in the range of “hundreds of billions of dollars.”Kotick departed from Activision Blizzard late last year after completing the publisher’s $68 billion sale to Microsoft. Kotick’s tenure at Activision Blizzard spanned decades and came under fire in 2021, when the state of California filed a now-dismissed lawsuit following an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination. Ultimately, California’s Civil Rights Department withdrew all allegations and claims relating to harassment and settled with Activision Blizzard in December 2023 for $54 million to resolve unsubstantiated pay and promotions claims.The court-approved settlement included a statement that provided that: “[N]o court or any independent investigation has substantiated any allegations that there has been systemic or widespread sexual harassment at Activision Blizzard; that Activision Blizzard senior executives ignored, condoned, or tolerated a culture of systemic harassment, retaliation, or discrimination; or that Activision Blizzard’s Board of Directors including its Chief Executive Officer, Robert Kotick, acted improperly with regard to the handling of any instances of workplace misconduct.”In addition, the settlement noted that a former chair of the EEOC had conducted a review of the company’s policies, practices and certain complaint data and reported that there was no widespread harassment at the company. The company itself publicly released its Transparency Report, which further asserted that there was never been widespread or systemic harassment or gender pay inequity at Activision Blizzard. Kotick departed with a golden parachute estimated to be worth around $15 million.Updated: 04/01/2024, 2:00 p.m. ET: This article has been updated to include details of the CRD settlement, that Activision Blizzard denied any wrongdoing, and the settlement confirms CRD could not substantiate those claims. Updated: 05/17/2025, 12:10 p.m. ET: This article has been updated to include additional language from the CRD settlement, and to include that as part of the settlement, the CRD withdrew the claims related to harassment from its complaint..