The search engine monopolist still has the right to sue, despite the fact that it recently lost its appeal against the European Commission’s decision regarding Google Android. However, it is necessary to consider whether Google promotes competition and choice or, more likely, tries to use the regulatory process to protect one of its monopolies, which is the distribution of Android games.
Activision’s Call of Duty was designated a “must-have product” by Sony and urged to have its market in the publicly censored version of its filing with the Brazilian Antitrust Authority (CADE).
That would draw comparisons between Sony and Google, both of which are undisputed market leaders in video game consoles thanks to their respective PlayStation products. Two industry leaders united in their opposition to a merger.
Microsoft’s response claimed that Sony bought the infamous “blocking rights” to prevent game developers from making their titles available on consoles other than the PlayStation. Google’s submission was made public but contained no criticism of the deal. However, Google’s Brazilian application claimed that companies other than Microsoft and Activision Blizzard are also capable of making “AAA” games. EA, Ubisoft, Sony, Take Two and Nintendo were all listed by Google. The reason Google hasn’t mentioned Epic Games (or Tencent) in this context is because of the ongoing Epic Games v. Google case.
The Google petition cited the Stadia game streaming service, which the company failed to provide in Brazil and will be discontinued as of this week. As a result, Google is no longer concerned about competing with Microsoft in game streaming.
Google has informed Brazil’s regulator that other games “can be considered similar in terms of quality and genre,” such as Battlefield 2042 (EA), Halo Infinite (Microsoft), Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege (Ubisoft), and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, contrary to Sony’s claim that Call of Duty is in a league of its own (Valve). For each of Activision Blizzard’s other essential games, Google also shows several rivals.
In that Brazilian filing, Google emphasized that several companies — including Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass, Nvidia’s GeForce Now and Amazon Luna — have recently entered the digital game distribution market, “with varying degrees of success.”
Apple’s insistence that each game must undergo App Store approval as a separate offering no doubt hurts Google as the iOS Stadia app failed to provide actual gameplay, but all Google rivals except Apple Arcade are affected, and according to Twitter would have failed Stadia anyway.
Several of Stadia’s shortcomings were noted by industry experts in 2019, but were not (and never will be) fixed. These include (but are not limited to) the fact that the basic subscription cost only gave players access to a small number of disappointing games, while Google wanted to charge upwards of $50 for new, high-quality games like Far Cry 6 or Red Dead Redemption 2. Even those title-specific fees were hidden from players until they signed up. Due to the company’s apparently low marketing investment in Stadia, some also felt that Google’s commitment to the platform was lacking. Due to Google’s eventual lack of tenacity, the skeptics were proved right.
Google has a track record of giving up projects. The website KilledByGoogle lists tombstones for some 300 products that Google is already discontinuing (or has announced it will soon be discontinuing, such as Stadia). Even this blog was influenced by Google’s tendency to stall initiatives: Until the summer of 2021, readers received daily email digests from this blog through Google’s FeedBurner service. But because Google stopped offering that email delivery service, FOSS Patents and many other blogs had to switch to another platform. All those things are off limits to Google. But all of them also fully meet the European Union’s policy objectives regarding the distribution of mobile apps. And each is in the best interests of independent app developers like me, especially since I first discovered the limitations of the Google and Apple app review dictatorship in 2020.
Microsoft needs a critical mass of mobile games to improve the situation in the mobile game industry, and the Activision Blizzard acquisition would achieve that. A meeting between Google and Sony and the European Commission to discuss how they intend to provide fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory access to their platforms would be much better.
News overview:
- Google met EU commission representatives and tried to prevent Microsoft from taking over Activision/Blizzard by replicating Stadia’s model
- Check out all the news and articles from the latest Gaming News and Updates.
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