Activision-Blizzard

While there was a lot of discussion of what effect the Microsoft and Activision Blizzard merger might have on the games industry in the long term, there hadn't been a lot of visible effect outside of perhaps some effect on Diablo 4's launch.

In November of 2022, Blizzard announced the suspension of game services in mainland China beginning January 23, 2023 licensing agreements with NetEase expired.

Microsoft has shown us once again that the true Survival Game at the heart of corporate culture is literal as it lays off 1,900 people, employed mostly in their newly acquired Activision-Blizzard division, and in so doing also gave the axe to their Untitled Survival Game.

Originally, Blizzard authenticators were small handheld devices that showed you a code that allowed you to log into Battle.net — but times have changed, and the physical authenticator we once knew is now a convenient phone app.

Rumors have been swirling about the FTC trying to block Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, but now it's official: the Federal Trade Commission will sue to block the merger of these two gaming giants.

Earlier this evening, Blizzard announced the suspension of most of its game services in China due to the expiration of its current licensing agreement with NetEase.

The QA employees of Raven Software, one of many studios owned by Activision Blizzard and the makers of Call of Duty: Warzone, have voted to unionize, asking the corporation to voluntarily recognize them as a union. Raven's head Brian Raffel has already announced a restructuring at Raven, breaking QA up so that instead of one department they'll be "embedded" into other departments.

I am still, one day later, absolutely gobsmacked by the news that Microsoft is buying Activision Blizzard for slightly less than $70 billion USD.

Microsoft is in the process of purchasing Activision Blizzard for roughly 68.7 billion dollars, and they have added all of the company's many franchises to its Xbox lineup according to multiple sources, one of which is Microsoft themselves.

Yesterday, the ABK Workers Alliance announced a strike over the firing of Raven QA workers, but the bigger news in that was that Activision Blizzard workers were being given union authorization cards.