Blizzard Activision Acquired by Microsoft

[notbobsmith]

As you may know, Microsoft is acquiring Blizzard Activision for $68.7 billion dollars. This will mean that Microsoft will soon be the owners of Sierra's properties. At first I thought that this wouldn't change much, but when the deal finally goes through, it might impact the availability of Sierra games on services like GOG.

[Tawmis]

[MusicallyInspired]

The coolest thing to come out of this was Geoff Keighley (host of The Game Awards) tweeting out that Microsoft now owns Freddy Pharkas and @'d Xbox saying "you know what to do." He then also revealed that he was a beta tester for Freddy Pharkas back in 1993. Likely nothing will happen, but it's really cool to see somebody so prolific shining a light on Sierra in a favourable way.

[notbobsmith]

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These a very cool.

The coolest thing to come out of this was Geoff Keighley (host of The Game Awards) tweeting out that Microsoft now owns Freddy Pharkas and @'d Xbox saying "you know what to do." He then also revealed that he was a beta tester for Freddy Pharkas back in 1993. Likely nothing will happen, but it's really cool to see somebody so prolific shining a light on Sierra in a favourable way.

Neat how people in the industry now used to work for Sierra back in the day.

[MusicallyInspired]

We need a LOGO.SYS colour cycling bootup Sierra logo for Win95/98 now.

[Rath Darkblade]

I had no idea about this. Fantastic ... I presume Microsoft did this in order to get their hands on the Warcraft/Starcraft franchises, then?

I already have as many Sierra games as I'd like, but I'm probably going to have to get a new computer in the new year or two. When that happens, I know I'll have to re-download my GOG/Steam games. If the Sierra games I downloaded from GOG won't be available, what do I do? *confused*

I already have QfG on CD/DVD, so that won't be an issue. If worst comes to worst, I can always get an external DVD drive. I suppose I can back up my Sierra games somehow ...

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Nicely done, Tawm. I like it.

[Tawmis]

I had no idea about this. Fantastic ... I presume Microsoft did this in order to get their hands on the Warcraft/Starcraft franchises, then?
I already have as many Sierra games as I'd like, but I'm probably going to have to get a new computer in the new year or two. When that happens, I know I'll have to re-download my GOG/Steam games. If the Sierra games I downloaded from GOG won't be available, what do I do? *confused*
I already have QfG on CD/DVD, so that won't be an issue. If worst comes to worst, I can always get an external DVD drive. I suppose I can back up my Sierra games somehow ...

More than likely GoG will still honor your purchase.
For example "Death Gate" used to be available there. I own it on CD-ROM, but tend to buy games I enjoy so I don't need to deal with a CD-ROM (or swapping disks) and to show support of the games I enjoy.
Something happened - and Death Gate got taken away.
But I still see it in my GoG library - and the forum is still there for Death Gate.

That said, I also download ALL of my GoG games as offline versions and store them on USB Drive and/or burn them to Blu-Ray Discs.

In the event, anything happens (licensing, gog.com goes down forever, whatever the case may be).

[notbobsmith]

I had no idea about this. Fantastic ... I presume Microsoft did this in order to get their hands on the Warcraft/Starcraft franchises, then?

I already have as many Sierra games as I'd like, but I'm probably going to have to get a new computer in the new year or two. When that happens, I know I'll have to re-download my GOG/Steam games. If the Sierra games I downloaded from GOG won't be available, what do I do? *confused*

I already have QfG on CD/DVD, so that won't be an issue. If worst comes to worst, I can always get an external DVD drive. I suppose I can back up my Sierra games somehow ...

MicroSierra.png

SierraMicro.png

Nicely done, Tawm. I like it.

This has happened in the past with some games GOG had but lost the license to. It still remains in your library available for download. This also happens from time to time with shows on Amazon that they lose the license to. It's still yours if you purchased it.

Like Tawmis, I keep the offline installers just in case. It's one thing I prefer over Steam. I feel a greater sense of ownership with the installer in my possession.

King's Quest got name dropped by the head of Microsoft gaming:

https://www.pcgamer.com/phil-spencer-wa ... -as-a-kid/

Realistically, I don't expect anything. I was actually (pleasantly) surprised they tried to bring the Sierra brand back in 2015 with the new King's Quest.

[Rath Darkblade]

Thanks for the article, NBS. I'd forgotten that Microsoft owns Bethesda, and I didn't know that they bought Double Fine (headed by Tim Schafer -- an absolute legend). His CV reads like a roll-call of some of LucasArts' greatest games: Full Throttle. Grim Fandango. Psychonauts. Co-designer of Day of the Tentacle. Assistant designer of Monkey Island 2 and 3.

You're right that realistically, we shouldn't expect anything for a while. The deal will not be closed until EOFY (End Of Financial Year, i.e. 30 June) 2023. Nearly a year-and-a-half. A lot could happen between now and then.

Also, Phil Spencer may be Microsoft's Gaming CEO -- but who knows who's further up the totem pole than he is? And who knows what Microsoft's budget may look like in a year-and-a-half?

I also think Microsoft's accounts division -- aka bean counters -- will be looking very closely at how well (or not) Age of Empires IV does. It's M$'s next big release, after all.

So why is Phil coming out with this now? I doubt it's simply because he likes these games from his childhood. It may be that he's throwing out ideas for what can be done with Blizzard Activision's stable, but I doubt he would do that unless he ran the idea past his boss, first. (And his boss ran the idea past his boss, and so on). It could, of course, just be a marketing exercise - i.e. look at us! We have this and that! Maybe we'll do ABC and XYZ! etc., which might excite the markets and drive up Microsoft's share price for a while.

I'm also curious: Microsoft now owns Bethesda, Bizzard Activision, and Double Fine. How many more gaming companies do they own? Are they in any danger of approaching the monopoly level? I'm old enough to still remember the Microsoft monopoly case in the late 1990s.

[DeadPoolX]

Microsoft wants Activision-Blizzard not just for the Warcraft and Starcraft properties, but also the Diablo series and Overwatch (among other games under that company's umbrella).

Any purchase you make on GOG or Steam will still be available for download even IF those services lost the license to sell those games on that platform. I have games on both that are no longer sold on them and I can download those games whenever I want, I just couldn't purchase them today for myself or someone else as a gift.

Like it's already been said, it's worthwhile to back up your installers or downloads. At the very least, this will save you from having to redownload games.

And yes, it's really nice to have the installer from GOG, but GOG has problems Steam doesn't, such as it doesn't get nearly as many new games as Steam does, GOG lacks the same multiplayer capabilities and there's no Steam Workshop (which is awesome for a lot of games!), and worst of all, companies always deliver updates to GOG versions later or sometimes not at all. There are games on GOG that are massively behind in updates compared to the Steam version and for a newer game that might experience stability and balancing issues, this is an important thing to consider when deciding WHERE to purchase games. Obviously, if you mainly purchase old games then it's not much of an issue.

As far as being a monopoly is concerned... Microsoft isn't anywhere close to being considered a monopoly. A monopoly means there are no other options. There are still plenty of AAA publishers around, not the least of which is Electronic Arts. Add in all the AA and indie developers and publishers around today, and there's nothing to worry about.

Even if Microsoft became a monopoly at some point, the US government would break it up (like they did with AT&T in the early 1980s), so it's to Microsoft's advantage to avoid becoming a monopoly.

[Tawmis]

From what I've read - Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard could result in the company facing antitrust scrutiny from regulators...
Because they'd said, there's titles currently on the Playstation that they DO intend to pull from the Playstation to make XBOX Exclusive... however, not all PS games under MS' hat will experience that.

[DeadPoolX]

From what I've read - Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard could result in the company facing antitrust scrutiny from regulators...
Because they'd said, there's titles currently on the Playstation that they DO intend to pull from the Playstation to make XBOX Exclusive... however, not all PS games under MS' hat will experience that.

Ah... yeah, I hadn't thought of that. The smart move would be to keep those particular games on the PlayStation and from here on out make those titles' sequels XBox exclusives.

That said, MS still isn't a monopoly (at this time) and if they have two brain cells to rub together, they'll avoid becoming one because the US government will break them up.

Gaming has a very weird landscape today. It's not like a "normal" product in that virtually anyone can produce a game, so technically-speaking, competition always exists yet the majority of those AA and indie competitors wouldn't be able to compete with a AAA studio.

[MusicallyInspired]

Phil came out with a statement recently saying he just finished a meeting/call with Sony and says he's happy to say that when the sale goes through they will honour all current licenses for games on Playstation and not remove anything. What that means for the future, however, is anyone's guess. Starfield is now an Xbox exclusive. Jury's out on TES6.

I think Activision's biggest hitters money-wise are Call of Duty and Candy Crush.

Here's a list of everything Microsoft currently owns. Couple that with Activision Blizzard's current owned developer list and you've got one colossal company. I don't think anti-trust is going to stop it though personally. If Disney went through with buying 20th Century Fox, so will this. And as DeadpoolX said, there are still a lot of other publishers out there. Ubisoft, Capcom, Konami, SquareEnix, EA, Take Two,...

[Tawmis]

I would have chalked Overwatch as a big hitter. SO. MANY. PEOPLE. Stream those games. Even a few people at my work who aren't standard "gamers" play OverWatch.

I never have, personally.

Until the recent drama, World of Warcraft, would have probably been their biggest hitter, I think over CoD because of the monthly subscription.

[notbobsmith]

And yes, it's really nice to have the installer from GOG, but GOG has problems Steam doesn't, such as it doesn't get nearly as many new games as Steam does, GOG lacks the same multiplayer capabilities and there's no Steam Workshop (which is awesome for a lot of games!), and worst of all, companies always deliver updates to GOG versions later or sometimes not at all. There are games on GOG that are massively behind in updates compared to the Steam version and for a newer game that might experience stability and balancing issues, this is an important thing to consider when deciding WHERE to purchase games. Obviously, if you mainly purchase old games then it's not much of an issue.

Granted, I don't have many recent games from GOG, but the ones I have don't seem to have a problem being up-to-date. No Man's Sky for example always keeps up with the current version.

I doubt there will be any anti-trust issues. Sure Microsoft can make all their games exclusive to the XBOX, but there are enough other players out there that there will still be enough games for both consoles or even Sony exclusives. I imagine this might put pressure on Sony to buy developers themselves.