Microsoft has announced a landmark $69 billion deal to purchase US gaming giant Activision Blizzard, grabbing the sex harassment scandal-hit firm as the tech colossus seeks to boost its power in video games.
\nMerging with troubled Activision will make Microsoft the third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony, it said, a major shift in the booming world of games.
\n\u201cThis acquisition will accelerate the growth in Microsoft\u2019s gaming business across mobile, PC, console and cloud and will provide building blocks for the metaverse,\u201d Microsoft said in a statement.
\nActivision, the California-based maker of \u201cCandy Crush\u201d, has been hit by employee protests, departures, and a state lawsuit alleging it enabled toxic workplace conditions and sexual harassment against women.
\nOver the past seven months, the company has received about 700 reports of employee concerns over sexual assault or harassment or other misconduct, in some cases, separate reports about the same incident, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
\nNearly 20 percent of Activision Blizzard\u2019s 9,500 employees have signed a petition calling for CEO Bobby Kotick to resign.
\n\u201cAcquiring Activision will help jump start Microsoft\u2019s broader gaming endeavors and ultimately its move into the metaverse with gaming the first monetization piece of the metaverse in our opinion,\u201d Wedbush analysts said after the news broke.
\nMicrosoft has just marked 20 years of the \u201cHalo\u201d video game franchise that turned its Xbox console into a hit.
\nThe company launched a host of initiatives to mark two decades of both Halo and the Xbox, including a virtual museum exploring key moments in the console\u2019s history.
\nXbox remains a key player in a video game industry now thought to be larger than the movie sector, with market research firm Mordor Intelligence valuing it at $173.7 billion in 2020.
\nTroubles, meanwhile, have stacked up for Activision over its sex harassment and discrimination scandal.
\nIn July, California state regulators accused the company of condoning a culture of harassment, a toxic work environment, and inequality.
\nIn September the Securities and Exchange Commission launched a probe into the company over \u201cdisclosures regarding employment matters and related issues.\u201d
\nAnd two months later the Journal reported that Kotick, accused of mishandling the harassment complaints, had signaled he would consider stepping down if he failed to quickly fix the company culture.
\nHe has led the company for more than three decades.
\nLate last year chief operating officer, Daniel Alegre, pledged a 50 percent increase in female and non-binary staff over the next five years so that they will account for more than a third of Activision\u2019s workers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Microsoft has announced a landmark $69 billion deal to purchase US gaming giant Activision Blizzard, grabbing the sex harassment scandal-hit firm as the tech colossus seeks to boost its power in video games. Merging with troubled Activision will make Microsoft the third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony, it said, a major shift […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-285710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-icttelecom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=285710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285713,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285710\/revisions\/285713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=285710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=285710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=285710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}