The US Supreme Court has recently denied the final desperate efforts by a group of gamers to block the Microsoft Activision Blizzard acquisition deal.
The Gamer Group Behind the Last-Ditch Block
This group of gamers is made up of 10 individuals who filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft in December 2022. Its aim is to argue that Microsoft’s acquisition of Call of Duty developer Activision would “foreclose rivals, limit output, reduce consumer choice, raise prices, and further inhibit competition.”
Block After Block After Block
A few months back in March 2023, one judge dismissed the lawsuit on grounds it did not plausibly allege the merger creates a reasonable probability of anticompetitive effects in any relevant market. Interestingly enough, these guys did not give up and continued to appeal their case, but with only a small success. Earlier this month, the Ninth Circuit of Appeals also denied the request for an injunction to block the deal. Now, their plan was to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, which resulted in today’s rejection.
There was a document that the group submitted stated that after the Ninth Circuit denied the motion for stay pending their appeal “without analysis”, it has now requested the Supreme Court “temporarily halt the merger so that Plaintiffs’ important and meritorious appeal can be heard”.
Final Denial
The group stands by its claim that the acquisition deal would only cause harm to the competition and to gamers themselves. Since the last-ditch attempt has been rejected, and the appeal was also denied by Supreme Court Justice Kagan. No explanation was given for the denial.