Sources: EU regulators seem likely to approve Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, satisfied by the company's Nintendo and Nvidia licensing deals
EU antitrust regulators are not expected to demand that Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) sell assets to win approval for its $69 billion acquisition …
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft's $69B Activision Blizzard pursuit has been running a two-track defense: Satya Nadella publicly bet on approval as far back as September, and by November sources said Microsoft would offer the EU a 10-year licensing remedy, initially framed around Sony. The Commission then escalated with a statement of objections in January, putting the deal on a formal path toward either remedies or a block.
The March signal — that Nintendo and Nvidia licensing deals have satisfied Brussels without any asset sales — marks the pivot from defense to remedy-by-contract. The arc closes three months later: the EU approves the deal on May 15, three weeks after the UK blocks it, making the EU the first major regulator to accept access commitments as the cure.
First-order effects
- Microsoft avoids a divestiture demand in the EU, keeping the full Activision Blizzard asset base — Call of Duty above all — intact inside the $69B purchase.
- Nintendo and Nvidia are locked in as contractual distribution partners for Call of Duty, converting the deal's biggest antitrust vulnerability into signed platform access.
Second-order effects
- Sony, the holdout named in the November remedy reporting, loses its strongest regulatory argument as Microsoft signs equivalent deals with rival platforms — its leverage now rests on the UK, which does block the deal weeks later.
- Regulators elsewhere face a diverging map: the EU accepts behavioral licensing while the UK blocks, forcing other jurisdictions to pick a remedy philosophy rather than defer to consensus.
Third-order effects
- If the EU's May approval holds as the template, large content mergers get cleared through multi-year access contracts rather than asset sales — a structural shift that lowers the bar for platform owners buying studios, at the cost of regulators permanently monitoring licensing compliance.
- The pattern also entrenches a specialist-absorption dynamic: the most valuable game studios become acquisition targets precisely because contractual access remedies make absorption politically survivable.
The trend: Big-tech content mergers are being waved through on behavioral licensing remedies instead of divestitures, with the EU's Activision clearance as the precedent other regulators now have to answer.