Done deal

Good Morning. Apparently, the New Year isn’t the only thing that Australia gets to celebrate before everyone else. Bethesda has partnered with Uber Eats in Sydney to deliver Starfield grub and swag.

Anyone care for some Starfield ‘Bitten’ Sandwich?

— Jason Liu, Tim Rhyne, Derek Neville

MAIN QUEST: Microsoft + Activision Blizzard finally closes

UK regulators have stepped aside as they asserted that their concerns had been addressed with regards to the blockbuster deal’s anti-competitive impact. The acquisition, that was originally announced in January of 2022, was officially announced as closed last Friday. Yes, this deal took a whole 20 months to clear all regulatory hurdles.

While Phil Spencer sees a potential Nintendo acquisition as his ‘career moment’, we’re pretty certain he’s got a special place for the Activision trophy as well.

What did Microsoft give up to appease regulators? Well, for one, the cloud rights for Activision Blizzard products will be transferred to Ubisoft for the next 15 years. Secondly, Sony will enjoy guaranteed availability of the Call of Duty franchise for the next 10 years.

Activision Blizzard’s CEO, Bobby Kotick, will be taking home a cool $400M.

Step back: the integration of Activision’s assets is another check in the column for IP being king in the gaming industry. What we see here is Microsoft willingly giving up 15 years of value extraction from ATVI’s cloud content (the inevitable growth channel) to get the deal done as they firmly believe that the beloved franchises won’t be going stale anytime soon.

HUD

• 🤖 CD Projekt RED used AI to replace a voice actor within the Phantom Liberty DLC. The actor passed away prior to the Cyberpunk 2077 expansion’s completion and the family gave permission.

• 📈 Nvidia is raising the price of its GeForce Now membership fees starting November 1st. Users could see anywhere between a 10% to 40% increase based on their location, with Canadian users seeing the biggest price hike.

• 🎮 Battlefield 2042 set a new peak concurrent player count on Steam, breaking its previous best set during its launch back in 2021. The game was free-to-play this past weekend, not just on Steam, but on Xbox and Playstation as well.

MAJOR W

• ⛏️ Minecraft Live 2023 had several updates including that

  1.21 will release mid-2024. Minecraft has crossed 300 million copies sold.

• 🌌 The Doctor meets Magic: The Gathering with four Commander decks and boosters that contain serialized Doctor cards limited to 500 per card.

• 👂️ Rumors suggest PlayStation trophies may be coming to PC versions of games.

• 🔪 InnerSloth is releasing its first new map in two years for Among Us on October 24th.

F IN THE CHAT

• 🤦 Diablo 4: Season of Blood teaser was taken down following mistakes being noticed by the community.

• 😑 Van Gogh Museum will not restock the Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat promo card due to scalpers.

• 💢 AMD’s latest GPU driver could inadvertently lead to Steam VAC bans for CS2 players that enabled the Anti-Lag+ feature for the game.

CAREER CORNER

• Xbox Communications Senior Director -- Microsoft (Redmond, WA)

• Data Science Manager — King (Stockholm, Sweden)

• Lead Dungeon Artist, World of Warcraft — Blizzard (Boston, MA)

HIVE MIND

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