The judge’s ruling allows the tech company to move ahead with its plans to acquire the developer behind popular games like “Call of Duty” and “World of Warcraft.”
The FTC argued the merger could harm competition in the market if Microsoft, the company behind the Xbox game system, had control over popular video game franchises.
District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, however, wrote that the FTC failed to make that case.
“The FTC has not shown it is likely to succeed on its assertion the combined firm will probably pull Call of Duty from Sony PlayStation, or that its ownership of Activision content will substantially lessen competition in the video game library subscription and cloud gaming markets,” Corley wrote as part of the 53-page redacted opinion.
The deal could close within days.
The FTC sued Microsoft last year to block the merger, and the case was brought to the agency’s in-house judge.
A trial is set to start on Aug. 2, but the FTC requested the preliminary injunction last month in an effort to block it from going through ahead of the regulator’s in-house trial.
FTC spokesperson Douglas Farrar said in a statement the agency is “disappointed in this outcome given the clear threat this merger poses to open competition in cloud gaming, subscription services, and consoles.”
Read more in a full report at TheHill.com.
