FTC drops case against Microsoft-Activision merger, acquisition now left unchallenged

The Federal Trade Commission has dismissed its case against the Microsoft-Activision merger.

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The largest video games acquisition in history is now left unchallenged. The FTC has dropped its administrative case and will no longer be tackling Microsoft's $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard King in its administrative court.

The federal agency released a filing that confirmed the adjudicative lawsuit that directly challenged the antitrust implications of the merger has been dismissed.

ORDER DISMISSING COMPLAINT

On May 7, 2025, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the decision of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, FTC v. Microsoft Corp., 681 F. Supp.3d 1069 (N.D. Cal. 2023), denying the Commission's application for a preliminary injunction to block the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Inc. by Microsoft Corp.

The Commission has determined that the public interest is best served by dismissing the administrative litigation in this case. Accordingly,

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the Complaint in this matter be, and it hereby is, DISMISSED.

After multiple years of in-depth coverage, millions of filings (and many more millions spent on the case itself), the merger saga is now complete.

The developments come after the FTC lost its preliminary injunction hearing in 2023 when it attempted to challenge the merger in federal courts, seeking an injunction to prevent Microsoft and Activision from joining until after its internal investigation had been completed.

The FTC had originally sought to bar the merger until it carried out its own internal administrative case, but having lost the preliminary injunction case in federal courts, and the subsequent loss in appeals courts, the agency now chooses to dismiss the case as to not spend more time--and, perhaps more critically, more of its limited budget--on challenging the Microsoft-Activision merger.