Microsoft Settles “Gamers’ Lawsuit”

According to several reports, Microsoft has settled the so-called “gamers’ lawsuit” that tried to scuttle its Activision Blizzard acquisition.

As you may recall, a small group of “recreational video game players” from multiple U.S. states sued Microsoft in 2022 in an attempt to block Microsoft’s $68 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. This suit was spurious from the get-go, and the group failed to convince the courts to block the transaction from completing. “The day after the merger [the plaintiffs] can play exactly the same way they played with their friends before the merger,” the Judge ruled in May 2023.

But the case continued, and news of a settlement arrived today via The Wire, which viewed court documents related to the case. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed but the lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice, meaning the gamers cannot file a similar suit again.

Ironically, the group’s fanciful concern that Microsoft would take games like Call of Duty and Overwatch away from competing platforms wasn’t just incorrect, it was backwards. Since closing the acquisition, Microsoft has only expanded the availability of its games on competing platforms, upsetting Xbox fans.