Even if the FTC wants to try and stick to their guns and appeal there isn’t any reason to think they are going to find a sympathetic legal system.
Not only that but the FTC can still pursue a case to block the merger if they want. They just don’t get to force Microsoft to not close in the next week or two.
I think I was seeing online that the injunctions are granted something like 70% of the time? If they failed here that’s a pretty big signal they’ve got a bad case. So why would any judge grant an appeal to the FTC when they can still litigate later if they want and it’s very likely the case is poor.
That includes non-merger cases, and horizontal merger cases. Easy to get a PI when your case is that some company is currently fucking over customers by making it hard to cancel subs or something.
I wouldn’t be shocked if the FTC was stupid enough to try an idiotic appeal here which should fail miserably given Judge Corley’s strong ruling in this case, and maybe just as important here is that this strong ruling is given in the context of a VERTICAL merger case which is not something an appeals court is going to stop with such a pathetic case by the FTC. The other giant reason that no appeals court is going to stop this after that ruling is that Judge Corley herself literally pointed out that there is no immediate harm regardless here because Call of Duty is on the PlayStation platform contractually through 2024 even if the deal closes.
I actually think the current FTC may be stupid enough and off the rails enough that they would like to continue with the impossible to win August administrative court case even after this failure and even a possible appeal and sure failure there too, but I suspect that someone in higher political position in the United States may make it clear behind the scenes to knock off the circus here.
I bet the discussions will happen very fast. It is not in the CMA interest that the deal appears to stall because of delays tactics, the CAT is already quite pissed to handle that case now.
I’m grateful for all the insight and news that was shared from some lawyers on another thread, but as this whole process has unfolded it’s painfully obvious why they were posting on an obscure gaming website and not actually in the court room.
This type of thing right here should be provided behind the scenes by Microsoft to various U.S. politicians to really double down on how wrong the FTC has gotten this and much of their work recently.
How is this exactly good for consumer? If I have gamepass in the uk, I would be able to play COD locally but if I want to stream COD I have to get pay for another cloud service to stream COD? Who are we protecting exactly, not the consumer.
I think he is actually talking about a separate ‘Game Pass UK’ service that wouldn’t have Call of Duty available on it at all, which is even less consumer friendly by the CMA for its citizens. LOL. I really think that the CAT was not happy with the CMA in the initial court appearances and then clearly weren’t happy with their delay attempt during the floundering FTC court case, so they probably know that a CAT beat down is coming if they don’t try to work something out here.
Totally correct. Because the CMA case is totally illogical any propose solution will also sound illogical. The only really logical conclusion is to the merger happen.
