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[Alpha Biz=(Chicago) Reporter Paul Lee] The Fair Trade Commission unconditionally approved Microsoft's acquisition of Blizzard. Considering Blizzard's major game share, it does not compete in the domestic game market.
The FTC said on the 30th that it has approved the acquisition, judging that there is no fear of actually limiting competition in the domestic game market after reviewing the combination of Microsoft's acquisition of Blizzard.
Microsoft, which provides console (Xbox) and cloud game services, is seeking to acquire Blizzard, a game developer that owns popular games (Call of Duty, Diablo, etc.).
Earlier on Jan. 18 last year, Microsoft signed a contract to acquire all of Blizzard's issued shares for $68.7 billion (about 90 trillion won) and reported a business combination to the FTC in April of the same year.
After the combination, the FTC focused on whether Microsoft may limit competition in the domestic console and cloud game service market by exclusively supplying Blizzard's popular games to its game services.
According to the review, the FTC does not have the ability to exclude rival game service providers because the combined share of games developed and distributed by Microsoft and Blizzard is small, major Blizzard games are not popular in Korea, and there are a number of popular game developers that can be traded by competitors.
AlphaBIZ 폴 리(hoondork1977@alphabiz.co.kr)
