I got into a lot of discussions with people who seemed to believe that Microsoft would "save" Activision-Blizzard. Clean up the culture, create a better work environment, shift the focus away from live-services and micro-transactions. People were expecting a lot of their older games to make their way to GamePass... Which is a whole other kind of predatory pricing.

Lo and behold- AB went ahead and laid off almost 2,000 redundant positions after the acquisition and don't seem to have changed their business structure much.

[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This may have been my thought.

I was never so deeply in favor of the acquisition, but I did find the focus on exclusives hypocritical. Microsoft had already made many of their games available cross platform, while Sony had not at the time.

[–] Omegamanthethird@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I don't find that hypocritical. My issue with acquisitions is that it makes multiplatform games potentially exclusive.

Franchises they built and invested in should be exclusive. Franchises they hoard with no additional resources should remain multiplatform.

[–] Omegamanthethird@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I definitely saw people looking at the culture angle as a silver lining or sometimes as a potential net positive. I only saw fanboys celebrating Bethesda though.

Either way it seemed to me like most were looking at the potential upside. Not that they were actually glad that it happened.

[–] lustyargonian@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago

It seems buying ABK made MSFT give up on exclusivity entirely