Activision Blizzard will sell its streaming rights to Ubisoft in a fresh attempt to win approval from Britain’s anti-trust regulator for its $68.7 billion sale to Microsoft. According to Reuters, Microsoft will not be able to release Activision games like Overwatch and Diablo exclusively on its own cloud streaming service or to control the licensing terms for rival services exclusively.
French gaming rival Ubisoft will acquire the cloud streaming rights for Activision’s existing PC and console games and any new games released by Activision in the next 15 years. That will apply globally but not in Europe, where Brussels had already accepted the original deal.
In Europe, Ubisoft will get a non-exclusive license for Activision’s rights to enable it to offer those games in that region too.
Sarah Cardell, Chief Executive of the CMA, said:
“The CMA has today confirmed that Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision, as originally proposed, cannot proceed.
Separately, Microsoft has notified a new and restructured deal, which is substantially different from what was put on the table previously. As part of this new deal, Activision’s cloud streaming rights outside of the EEA will be sold to a rival, Ubisoft, who will be able to license out Activision’s content to any cloud gaming provider. This will allow gamers to access Activision’s games in different ways, including through cloud-based multigame subscription services. We will now consider this deal under a new Phase 1 investigation.”
Ubisoft will compensate Microsoft for the cloud streaming rights to Activision’s games through a one-off payment and through a market-based wholesale pricing mechanism, including an option that supports pricing based on usage. The terms of the transaction will allow Ubisoft to commercialize these rights to any other cloud gaming services provider (including Microsoft itself).
Ubisoft will have the ability to license out to third parties the cloud streaming rights to Activision’s games under any business model of its choosing, including buy-to-play, multigame subscription services, or any other model that may arise. Ubisoft will also be able, for a fee, to require Microsoft to adapt Activision’s titles to operating systems other than Windows, such as Linux, if it decides to use or license out the cloud streaming rights to Activision’s titles to a cloud gaming service that runs a non-Windows operating system.
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