Daily Briefing: Tuesday 1st February

Sony are buying Bungie

Not to be outdone by Microsoft’s seemingly bottomless wallet, Sony this week announced that they will be acquiring Bungie - the original Halo developers and creators of Destiny - in a deal worth around $3.6bn. In a new writeup announcing the acquisition, Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO Jim Ryan that Bungie will be “an independent subsidiary” of SIE when the deal closes, and that they will remain a multiplatform studio with the option to “self-publish and reach players wherever they choose to play.”

• These kinds of acquisitions obviously take a great deal of plan and planning so it would be silly to suggest that Sony buying Bungie is a sort of knee-jerk reaction to Microsoft’s historic acquisition of Activision Blizzard. However, the way Sony are publicly discussing this acquisition seems to include some thinly-veiled criticism of Microsoft’s controversial deal. Literally the first thing that Jim Ryan says in his writeup is that he wants to “be very clear to the community that Bungie will remain an independent and multi-platform studio and publisher.” This must be a dig at Microsoft’s apparent unwillingness to commit on the exclusivity future of franchises like Call of Duty.

Team17 announce NFTs, draw criticism from studios

It feels like every day we have some new ridiculous story about NFTs, the hot new tech trend that allows you to kind of sort of own something that kind of sort of exists. The most recent studio to involve themselves with the controversial technology is Team17, who recently announced a line of “environmentally friendly” NFTs based on their hit Worms franchise. These “limited edition” Worms NFTs will be computer-generated images, and that’s about it as far as actual information goes. This announcement feels a little rushed and more than a little unwanted.

• Team17’s announcement drew a lot of criticism, and much of it came from their own partner studios. According to new reports, several teams within Team17 only learned about the controversial plan after it had already been announced, which has led teams like Moving Out developer SMG or Going Under developer Aggro Crab releasing statements publicly condemning Team 17’s actions. It’ll be interesting to see whether anything comes out of this public show of defiance.

The FTC will investigate Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard deal

That’s according to a new report from Bloomberg, which states that the United States Federal Trade Commission has stepped in to handle the ongoing antitrust review of Microsoft’s $69bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard. According to an anonymous source from within the organisation, the FTC will reportedly investigate the deal to determine whether it constitutes unfair competitive practice.

• The reason why this is such a big deal is because reviews of this type are typically handled by the Department of Justice in collaboration with the FTC. The FTC handling this review on their own is a notable break from tradition. It could also prove problematic for Microsoft as, on top of the deal already being highly controversial in the realms of competition and consolidation, the FTC tend to be more aggressive in their policy of unfair deals. They announced this intention a while back and Microsoft likely don’t want to be their first proper field test. Watch this space.