Microsoft’s $69 billion takeover of games publisher Activision Blizzard has overcome its final hurdle – the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority.

In a statement published on Friday, the CMA said that it had given preliminary approval to the largest tech acquisition in history after Microsoft provided remedies to concerns it had around cloud gaming.

While the takeover had been greenlit by the EU and more recently (despite a failed attempt from the Federal Trade Commission to block it) the US, the CMA had been the biggest barrier to the deal.

The UK regulator had previously argued that Activision’s library, which includes the Call of Duty franchise and games like World of Warcraft, would have bolstered Microsoft’s already market-leading Xbox Cloud Gaming offering to a monopolistic degree and blocked it on those grounds.

Last month, Microsoft restructured the deal to transfer the cloud streaming rights for all current and new Activision Blizzard PC and console games released over the next 15 years to Ubisoft in perpetuity. This new version of the deal means that Microsoft will not exclusively control the licensing terms of Activision games on rival services, and Microsoft will have to pay the Assassin's Creed owner to licence titles to be included in Xbox Cloud Gaming outside of the EU.

The final throw of the dice by Microsoft appears to have worked, with the CMA saying that "the prior sale of the cloud gaming rights will establish Ubisoft as a key supplier of content to cloud gaming services, replicating the role that Activision would have played in the market as an independent player.”

In a statement, the regulator said that the restructured deal "makes important changes that substantially address the concerns" it had with the original deal last year, calling it "materially different" in nature to the previous transaction.

The CMA said it does still have "residual concerns that certain provisions in the sale of Activision’s cloud streaming rights to Ubisoft could be circumvented, terminated, or not enforced,” but that “Microsoft has offered remedies to ensure that the terms of the sale of Activision’s rights to Ubisoft are enforceable by the CMA,” and that the regulator has initially concluded “this additional protection should resolve those residual concerns.”

The CMA will conduct one final consultation until 6 October – ahead of the merger’s extended deadline of 18 October.

Reacting to the news, Microsoft president Brad Smith posted on X – formerly Twitter – that "We are encouraged by this positive development in the CMA’s review process".

Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, sent a memo to staff describing the CMA's decision as "a positive development and a welcome indicator that our hard work is bringing us closer to our goal."

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