An announcement like this is not out of the ordinary considering the corporate climate of late.
When Amazon agreed to buy video game streaming service Twitch no more than two weeks ago, many Twitch celebrities expressed apprehension over what would become of the site--and their rights as content producers.
Similarly, the merge of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the two largest telecom companies in the country, was initiated this year and tagged with an exchange of $45 billion.
The last notable time that the government stepped in to halt an enormous corporate merger was the 2011 deal between AT&T and T-mobile. The Department of Justice argued that an enormous merge like this would stifle competition and hurt economic growth.
Do you believe that these mergers have gotten out of hand? To what extent does the video game industry mirror large corporate mergers? At what point should the government step in to protect consumers' economic interests, if at all?
2 comments:
The proposed Comcast-Time Wanker merger is on a whole 'nother level than Microsoft buying an indie company with only really the Minecraft property to it's name. Larger game companies buying out smaller ones is nothing new. What would be new (and terrible) is if it was like the Com.-Warner merger in that it would create a super monopoly in many areas of the US, especially for something as important as access to the internet which the UN has called an "essential human right."
Ben, I'm aware that the Time Warner-Comcast merge is a much more extreme issue than the buyouts of Twitch and Minecraft--I meant it more as a parallel than an example. Nevertheless, I believe that the the question of Twitch and Mojang has significance as well. In my opinion, these video game company buyouts signal a much larger trend in which not only do companies acquire the developers of video games, but also their distribution methods. You are correct in saying that horizontal monopolies are a bigger problem, but I think vertical integration should be analyzed as well.
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