EU antitrust regulators are set to decide by 5 March whether to approve Microsoft’s $7.5 billion acquisition of ZeniMax Media, parent company of Fallout and Doom games developer Bethesda Softworks.

This will be U.S. tech giant’s biggest gaming acquisition to date and comes amidst strong demand during the pandemic.

Microsoft requested European Commission approval for the acquisition on 29 January, according to a filing on the EU executive’s website.

The EU competition committee can either open a full-scale investigation or clear the deal with or without concessions.

Joost Rietveld, assistant professor of strategy at UCL, commented: "Microsoft appears to be betting on a two-pronged approach where it releases some of its most valued video games across competing platforms including Sony’s PlayStation 5 and the Nintendo Switch (as it has done in the past with, say, Minecraft), while also continuing to build the appeal of its video game subscription service Xbox Game Pass. Microsoft’s “end game”, if you will, might be a console-less future in which Xbox Game Pass is available across devices and markets—akin to Netflix."

“Big technology firms such as Facebook, Amazon, and Google have recently come under investigation by various international regulators for their allegedly anti-competitive practices (including self-preferencing and competing with complementors, such as game developers)."

Rietveld concluded: "It shall be interesting to see if the EU’s antitrust regulators view Microsoft’s acquisition of ZeniMax Media as ‘just another video game acquisition’ or whether it shall be met with the same type of scrutiny as some of the other big tech platforms are facing. After all, Microsoft is a powerful platform company, and both the Xbox and Xbox Game Pass are large and popular platforms."

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