Bobby Kotick Assures Employees he is ‘Confident’ Activision Blizzard Microsoft Merger Will Go Through in Internal Update

On Thursday, the Federal Trade Commission announced that it will pursue a lawsuit to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, as reported by The Washington Post. This seems to mark a more aggressive strategy by the agency and new chair Linda Khan to enforce anti-trust policy. The FTC announced its lawsuit against Microsoft on the same day its San Jose trial against Facebook parent company Meta over its attempted acquisition of virtual reality company Within. Uppercut has received a copy of the email sent out by Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick addressing the FTC lawsuit from a source within the company who wished to remain anonymous. The text of the letter, in its entirety, is as follows:

“Team,

I wanted to provide a brief update on our pending merger with Microsoft. This week the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced its decision to challenge the deal. This means they will file a lawsuit to block the merger, and arguments will be heard by a judge.

This sounds alarming, so I want to reinforce my confidence that this deal will close. The allegation that this deal is anti-competitive doesn’t align with the facts, and we believe we’ll win this challenge.

Thanks to the hard work by all of you every day, we’re on a strong path, bringing epic joy to players around the world with what I believe are the greatest games in the industry. At the same time, the competitive landscape is shifting, and, simply put, a combined Microsoft-ABK will be good for players, good for employees, good for competition, and good for the industry. Our players want choice, and this gives them exactly that. You can read more about the specifics on those points in this update we recently shared with you.

We believe these arguments will win despite a regulatory environment focused on ideology and misconceptions about the tech industry.

Thank you for your dedication and creativity.

Bobby”

This news serves as a sort of double whammy for ABK, as Blizzard employees in Minnesota and Texas also served a letter to their employers on Thursday calling for an end to the practice of bug quotas and for other workplace improvements. Between the FTC and ABK’s own employees organizing against the company in the wake of an allegedly toxic and abusive work environment over the past year, which the company has stumbled in handling internally, Activision Blizzard seems to be struggling as a company on all sides.