The EU reportedly won’t reinvestigate Microsoft’s ActiBlizz deal following restructure

Earlier this month, reports claimed that Microsoft would obtain UK approval for its Activision Blizzard deal this week, with plans to close as soon as this coming Friday. However, given that the deal was tweaked after obtaining EU approval for the old deal, there have been questions as to whether the restructured transaction would have to go through a new approval process. According to a new source this week, that won't be the case.

Bloomberg backs up earlier claims that the deal will close very soon, with the UK apparently set to approve the acquisition in the next few days. The report also claims that the EU Commission has concluded that the changes made to the deal to appease the UK's Competition & Markets Authority won't warrant a new investigation into the deal. With that in mind, there should be no hold-ups once the CMA's decision comes through, allowing Microsoft to close the deal ahead of its contracted October 18th deadline.

The reworked deal will see Microsoft obtaining Activision Blizzard King, but the company will transfer the cloud streaming rights to those games over to Ubisoft. Under the agreement, Ubisoft will be free to sub-license those games out to any company it chooses and it will be allowed to request ports from Microsoft to support specific platforms, such as cloud services that don't rely on Windows – however, there will be fees involved with ports.

The CMA did initially block the acquisition as while Microsoft had managed to beat the console theory of harm, the CMA still held concerns over the effect of the deal on the burgeoning cloud gaming market. With Ubisoft set to take control of Activision Blizzard games in the cloud market, those concerns have been squashed.

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KitGuru Says: At some point within the next week, this whole ordeal will finally come to an end. Either everything closes by the October 18th deadline (next Wednesday), or Microsoft takes a tough defeat and parts with roughly $5 billion in break-up fees with Activision.

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