Activision Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick has taken aim at post-Brexit Britain, as it looks increasingly likely the UK’s anti-competition regulator will try and block Microsoft’s ambitious $68.7bn buyout of the company.
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is due to weigh in imminently on the proposed deal, which has already seen objections from the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and regulators in the EU.
Activision’s controversial CEO was asked by CNBC how he would react if the UK joined other regulators in opposing the deal – and Kotick did not hold back.
“You think about post-Brexit UK, it’s probably the first country where you’re seeing a recession and the real, severe consequences of a recession,” Kotick said (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz).
“You have an incredibly educated workforce with a lot of technical talent, places like Cambridge where the best AI and machine learning is, I would think you’d want to embrace a transaction like this where you’re going to see job creation and opportunity,” he continued. “It really isn’t at all about Sony or Microsoft’s platform, it’s really about the future of technology.
“Rishi Sunak has said they’d like to be the Silicon Valley of Europe or of the continent, and if deals like this can’t get through, they’re not going to be Silicon Valley, they’ll be Death Valley.”
It’s unclear what job creation and opportunity the UK would see from Microsoft’s buyout of Activision Blizzard going ahead, as the publisher does not operate any major development studios here.
Kotick went on to suggest that regulators simply did not understand the video games industry landscape, and that they should be more concerned with competition on a more global scale – in particular, western companies versus those already entrenched in Asia.