European Union approves Microsoft to acquire Bethesda for $7.5 billion

Earlier, Microsoft announced the wholly-owned acquisition of Bethesda’s parent company Zenimax Media for US$7.5 billion, which is a well-known game developer in the industry.

Microsoft hopes to strengthen its own game development through the acquisition of this well-known game developer, which will help Microsoft fight its old rival Sony in the game business.

It is worth noting that this transaction is also the highest bidding transaction in Microsoft’s gaming business, and the price of this transaction is equivalent to Microsoft’s bid when it acquired Github.

“Halo 4 Smartglass on Surface RT” by beije is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Of course, mergers and acquisitions of this scale naturally need to be approved by regulatory agencies. The good news is that both the US and EU regulatory agencies have approved the transaction.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission approved Microsoft’s transaction last week, and at the time Microsoft was still waiting for the approval of EU regulators, otherwise, it could not proceed.

Now the European Union regulators have also announced their agreement to Microsoft’s acquisition. So far, the regulatory issues have been resolved, and the acquisition is now complete.

After the completion of the acquisition, Zenimax Media became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft, and Bethesda Game Development Studios, such as Bethesda, automatically became a subsidiary of Microsoft. thevergeZenimax Media’s studios include Bethesda, id Software, and some small studios such as Tango Gameworks.

Microsoft plans to add all the company’s games to the Xbox Game game subscription service. Of course, these games may only support the Microsoft platform.

Via: theverge