By Nelson Schneider - 04/08/23 at 03:01 PM CT
Sony has been losing its mind ever since Microsoft first announced its intention to purchase Activision (along with subsidiaries Blizzard and King) for $69 billion. This announcement first dropped in January of 2022, and Sony has been acting out, like a spoiled child, ever since. First they attempted to show that they are just as capable of buying development studios and publishers by paying a drop-in-the-bucket for former Microsoft studio, Bungie, then proceeded to behave so cravenly and wantonly for the rest of the year that the company topped the 2022 list of MeltedJoystick Fails.
It was, thus, with a great sense of schadenfreude that I received the news that Sony’s legal and financial pot-stirring against the MS-Activision merger has backfired, bringing Sony itself under closer scrutiny by governmental and regulatory bodies. Gamers have long known that Sony has outright paid for games to be exclusive to the PlayStation platform for as long as there has been a PlayStation platform. Now the United States Congress is aware of this fact, and is accusing Sony of unfair trade practices in violation of the new IPEF, which went into effect in 2022.
To make matters worse for Sony, as part of the FTC investigation as to whether the Microsoft-Activision merger would be anti-competitive and suppress competition, Microsoft took the opportunity to subpoena Sony to force the formerly-Japanese game console maker to reveal its own anti-competitive dealings. Now, an administrative judge has upheld the subpoena, meaning that Sony will almost certainly be forced to reveal all the skeletons in its closet.
I have not liked Sony or approved of its gaming business dealings for well over a decade now, so the fact that their traditional Mafioso tactics have blown up in their collective face makes me very happy. Unfortunately, Microsoft is nobody’s friend, and the horrible business practices of the Games Industry aren’t just confined to a single big publisher – These problems are endemic. Hopefully the unveiling of some of the Games Industry’s dirty secrets will not stop at just disemboweling Sony, but will lead to positive reforms that benefit all gamers.
