Microsoft is buying 'Call of Duty' publisher Activision.; Microsoft is paying $68.7 billion in cash for the game company. Microsoft is buying Activision, the major video game publisher behind the. January 8, 2022. Publisher Activision has had enough and is suing one of the largest cheat providers. Your shooter “Call of Duty” is currently overrun by cheaters. What doping was in cycling in the 90s is now the cheat in e-sports: it falsifies the sport.
Microsoft's head of Xbox, Phil Spencer.Dan Steinberg/Invision/AP
Microsoft is buying 'Call of Duty' publisher Activision.
Microsoft is paying $68.7 billion in cash for the game company.
Microsoft is buying Activision, the major video game publisher behind the 'Call of Duty' franchise, in an all-cash deal valued at around $68.7 billion.
It's Microsoft's largest ever acquisition, and the largest video game acquisition in history.
The price values Activision's stock at $95.00 per share — a price it hasn't held since July 2021, when news first broke that the state of California was suing the publisher over allegations of widespread harassment that proliferated due to the company's 'frat boy' culture.
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In the deal, Microsoft will become the third-largest video game company, following Chinese giant Tencent and PlayStation-maker Sony.
Call Of Duty Publishers
Microsoft will acquire a huge selection of intellectual property and game development resources: Game franchises like 'Call of Duty,' 'World of Warcraft,' and 'Candy Crush,' in addition to major game studios like Blizzard Entertainment and Treyarch. Activision's approximately 10,000 employees will join Microsoft in the deal.
Beyond IP and development resources, Microsoft said Activision's games will appear on the company's Netflix-like video game subscription service, Game Pass, in the coming months. That service, which has been critical to Xbox's success in recent years, has now reached 25 million subscribers, Microsoft said.
Microsoft is also inheriting Activision's recently reported culture issues, including claims that CEO Bobby Kotick knew for years about a variety of claims of sexual harassment and rape at his company, and did little to fix the problems.
Kotick will continue on with the company, Microsoft said in its press release announcement, and will report to Xbox leader Phil Spencer when the deal closes.
Microsoft's acquisition of Activision is the latest in an ongoing series of major video game acquisitions, including Take-Two Interactive announcing just eight days ago that it's purchasing Zynga for nearly $13 billion. Microsoft itself has led the charge on acquisitions, starting with a $2.5 billion purchase of 'Minecraft' maker Mojang. Most recently, the company purchased game publisher Bethesda Softworks for $7.5 billion.
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'Gaming is the most dynamic and exciting category in entertainment across all platforms today,' Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in the release, 'and will play a key role in the development of metaverse platforms.'
The deal, if approved, is expected to close within the next year.
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Employees at Activision Blizzard Inc. are calling for a walkout on Wednesday to protest the company’s responses to a recent sexual discrimination lawsuit and demanding more equitable treatment for underrepresented staff.
Recent Modern Warfare Update
Last week, California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing sued the publisher behind games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, detailing disturbing incidents of sexual harassment and assault and a culture in which women faced unequal pay and retaliation. Activision called the allegations false and distorted in a statement last week, and Fran Townsend, executive vice president for corporate affairs, sent a letter to staff echoing that claim.
Infuriated Activision employees have spoken out on social media, and more than 2,000 staff signed an open letter calling the company’s responses “abhorrent and insulting.” Now they’re planning a strike.
The walkout is being organized by a group of employees at the subsidiary Blizzard Entertainment, where the majority of the lawsuit’s allegations were focused. In a statement to Bloomberg, the workers said their goal was to “improve conditions for employees at the company, especially women, and in particular women of color and transgender women, nonbinary people, and other marginalized groups.”
The strike will take place outside of Blizzard’s campus in Irvine, California, on Wednesday.
The employees are demanding:
That Activision ditch mandatory arbitration clauses “in all employee contracts, current and future.”
New practices for recruiting, interviewing, hiring and promotion that facilitate better representation “agreed upon by employees in a company-wide Diversity, Equity & Inclusion organization.”
The publication of data on relative compensation, promotion rates and salary ranges for employees “of all genders and ethnicities at the company.”
That a diversity task force be allowed to hire a third party to audit the company’s leadership, hierarchy and HR department. “It is imperative to identify how current systems have failed to prevent employee harassment, and to propose new solutions to address these issues.”
This is the second major organizing effort from Blizzard in about the past 12 months. Last year employees shared their salaries on a public spreadsheet and sent a letter of demands to management to ask for more equitable compensation. That action led to very little response, employees said.
Call Of Duty Status
Collective action is rare in the video-game industry, which has no unions in North America. A representative for the Blizzard employees organizing this walkout said they were not currently discussing unionizing.