As the European Commission keeps up with its evaluation of the Activision Blizzard acquisition deal, the regulatory office now has another brick in the wall, and this one comes from within thus prompting an official take on the subject at the very top level.
It started when Ricardo Cardoso stated on social media that the “Commission is working to ensure that you will still be able to play Call of Duty on other consoles (including my Playstation)”. The statement, which is similar to that of Sony’s Playstation division, is at the core of the debate over whether or not the deal should be approved. However, in this particular case Cardoso totally blew it… and the community quickly called him out on the matter, as did the commission itself.
Per the official statement:
“Mr Cardoso works in the Director General for the Internal Market and not in the Directorate General for Competition. Mr Cardoso is not involved in the assessment of this transaction. Furthermore, as indicated clearly in his Twitter profile, he tweets in a personal capacity.”
Mr. Cardoso followed up on this by offering his own clarification:
“To clarify: I am not involved in the assessment of the merger and don’t even work in the department dealing with mergers. As is clear from my profile my comments are personal and not a Commission position, whose decision will be taken on the basis of the facts and the law.”
The incident comes amongst intense evaluation of the acquisition proposal’s impact on major AAA franchise materials such as Overwatch, Crash Bandicoot and Call of Duty given that the proposal was filed by Xbox platform holders at Microsoft. Decisions regarding the fate of the deal are expected over the next several months.
