The purchase of Activision by Microsoft is the news of the year. But before it was announced, Activision had been in the news for several months for alleged abuse and inappropriate conduct within the company. Extremely unfortunate news and event that when splashed into public opinion, They were about to give up the purchase.
And it is that according to point from Bloomberg, Microsoft’s interest in Activision is not new. And in fact, almost two years ago those from Redmond had some interest in the video game developer. Already in November 2021, in an interview, Spencer, visible head of Xbox, reiterated Xbox’s interest in reaching acquisition agreements that would add casual and social games, something in which until now Activision was the king with King and Blizzard.
After the report of Wall Street Journal, which detailed multiple allegations of sexual harassment at one of the game publisher’s studios, Spencer circulated an internal email noting that the company had “evaluating all aspects of our relationship with Activision Blizzard and making ongoing proactive adjustments.”
Sexual Harassment at Activision and Search for Other Data Subjects
However, according to Bloomberg, at that time Microsoft also was working on a different approach: the purchase and merger of the company. But the sexual abuse scandal put the whole operation on hold. According to sources in that medium, when everything came to light and Activision struggled to save its reputation with gamers and investors (with a 15% drop in shares), they weighed the possible acquisition, but its CEO, Kotick, and the board they did not want to sell the company at that time to Microsoft, although they were looking for a buyer.
In that sense, according to Bloomberg sources, Activision tried Find other interested parties. And among them was Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms, along with another large, unidentified company. However, none of them showed any interest.
According to the same sources, realizing Activision’s doubts, Microsoft backed down, pointing out that the company was happy to remain a partner and work to sell more Activision titles on Xbox, but not to merge. And in the middle of this maelstrom, the purchase agreement of Zynga, by Take-Two Interactive, was confirmed, so Microsoft lost the opportunity to acquire the other great mobile game developer. However, it seems that before selling to Take-Two, they asked Microsoft if it was interested, declining the offer according to sources at Bloomberg. The reason? Microsoft already had a bigger deal on its hands: Activision.