Microsoft agrees to a settlement in the "gamers lawsuit" over the Activision Blizzard deal

In December 2022, a group of 10 people describing themselves as gamers, filed a lawsuit against Microsoft. The group stated they wanted to stop the company's plan to acquire Activision Blizzard, claiming that such a purchase would cause a large amount of harm to gamers and to the game industry in general.

On Monday, The Hollywood Reporter posted a word that Microsoft has reached a settlement with this group of gamers, ending the lawsuit and the legal actions in this case. The lawsuit was ended “with prejudice," which means that the case cannot be refiled.

The specific terms of the settlement between Microsoft and the group of gamers was not disclosed. However, the settlement does say that both Microsoft and the gamers have agreed to "bear their own costs and fees."

Microsoft officially closed the deal to purchase Activision Blizzard just over a year ago in October 2023 for $69 billion. Since then, Microsoft has laid off a large percentage of employees in its gaming division, including 1,900 team members in January and another 650 people in September. It also closed three of its internal game studios in May with an unknown number of people affected. One of them Tango Gameworks, was later acquired by Krafton.

Believe it or not, Microsoft is still not clear when it comes to the purchase of Activision Blizzard. The US Federal Trade Commission has been opposed to this deal. In December 2023 both sides met inside the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Fransisco

The US government tried to make an argument that the judge who denied its earlier preliminary injunction to keep Microsoft from buying Activision Blizzard made a bad ruling, stating that judge should have ruled that the deal still had serious issues related to competition in the game industry. The appeals court has yet to announce its ruling on this case and there's no indication when that might actually happen.