Captain John Price returns in the campaign for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III
Captain John Price returns in the campaign for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III
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U.K. regulators finally approve Microsoft’s $68.7B acquisition of Activision Blizzard

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 4 min

The United Kingdom’s antitrust agency has finally given preliminary approval to Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

The Competition and Markets Authority issued a statement today saying it has given preliminary approval. The next step is for the CMA to gather third-party feedback, after which the CMA will reach a final decision. That means the merger is all but a done deal, after a regulatory process that involved an antitrust trial in the U.S. The companies originally proposed the merger in January 2022.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.