The FTC ended its Microsoft-Activision case in 2025 after losing its appeal for an injunction

On May 7, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a district court's refusal to give the Federal Trade Commission a preliminary injunction against Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the publisher of Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Diablo and Overwatch. On May 22, 2025, the Commission issued an order dismissing its own administrative complaint against the deal, stating that the public interest was best served by ending that litigation. The order closed the U.S. government's challenge to a merger that had been completed in October 2023.

From announcement to closing

Microsoft announced on January 18, 2022, that it would buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. The FTC's investigation involved nearly three million documents and 15 investigational hearings, and on December 8, 2022, it filed an administrative complaint arguing that the deal would likely substantially lessen competition in three U.S. markets: game consoles, game subscription services and cloud game streaming. In its case summary, the agency alleged that the deal would enable Microsoft to suppress competitors to Xbox and to its growing subscription and cloud gaming business.

On June 12, 2023, the FTC asked the federal district court in Northern California for a preliminary injunction to stop the deal while its in-house case went ahead. The court denied it on July 10, 2023, after a five-day hearing, and on July 14 a Ninth Circuit panel refused the FTC's emergency request for an injunction pending appeal. The merger closed on October 13, 2023, shortly after the FTC filed its reply brief in the appeal, while the administrative case remained pending before the Commission.

The commitments around the deal

After the FTC filed its complaint, Microsoft signed agreements meant to meet regulators' concerns. The appeals court's opinion lists a ten-year agreement with Nintendo, signed in February 2023, to bring future Call of Duty titles to Nintendo consoles at the same time as on Microsoft's platforms; ten-year agreements with five cloud gaming companies; and repeated offers to Sony to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for at least ten years, which Sony accepted after the appeal was filed.

The UK took a different route. Its Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) issued a final order prohibiting the merger on August 22, 2023, then approved a restructured deal on October 13, 2023. Under it, Activision Blizzard sold its cloud streaming rights outside the European Economic Area, for its current games and those released in the next 15 years, to Ubisoft, which may not license them to Microsoft on an exclusive basis. Within the European Economic Area, Microsoft kept the cloud streaming rights to meet its commitments to the European Commission.

What the appeals court decided

The three-judge panel, in an opinion by Judge Daniel P. Collins, held that the district court used the correct legal standards and did not abuse its discretion or rely on clearly erroneous findings when it concluded that the FTC had not shown it was likely to win. On consoles, the FTC's main theory was that Microsoft would make Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox, or disfavor PlayStation with an inferior or later version; the panel found no abuse of discretion in the district court's holdings that the evidence did not sufficiently support either.

On subscriptions, the panel accepted the district court's reasoning that, because Activision Blizzard had long opposed putting its games on subscription services, making them available there for the first time, even exclusively to Microsoft, would not substantially lessen competition. On cloud streaming, the FTC had not shown that Activision Blizzard's games would have reached that market without the merger. The panel affirmed on the likelihood-of-success question alone and did not rely on Microsoft's written offer to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation on equal terms for 10 years. It also left open whether the UK conditions could be taken into account.

The opinion records how much the series weighs in the U.S. market: a Call of Duty game had been the top-selling console game in the United States every year but one since 2014, and Activision Blizzard's total net revenue was $7.5 billion in 2022.

What applies now

The FTC's case page, checked on November 13, 2026, lists the matter as closed, with the dismissal order of May 22, 2025, as its latest entry. The order lists three commissioners: Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson, Melissa Holyoak and Mark R. Meador. By our reading of the record, the court rulings concerned only whether to halt the deal while the case continued, and the dismissal means the FTC's administrative case ended without a final decision on whether the merger violated the Clayton Act.

In the UK, the CMA's page for the restructured deal, checked the same day, shows the case closed on October 13, 2023, with undertakings accepted, and no update since. For how Microsoft's games business has done since the deal, see our report on Xbox revenue.