May 2-3, 2023: After publication, Activision Blizzard contacted us about certain aspects of the original article below. Accordingly, we've made various clarifications and amendments, primarily to paragraph six.
If you'd like to know what happens when you say no to a company that's used to getting what it wants, all you need to do is to look at what Microsoft and, especially, Activision Blizzard, are doing.
Not long after the UK's Competition and Market Authority (CMA)
, vice chair and president of Microsoft, Brad Smith, referred to it as the company's "darkest day" in Britain. Then, Activision Blizzard followed it up by saying that the Federal Trade Commission, another roadblock to the acquisition, had influenced the CMA.
In a
