The British authorities have announced that they will not approve the plan to acquire the game giant by the US IT giant Microsoft, saying that it may hinder competition in the market.
In January last year, Microsoft announced that it would acquire Activision Blizzard, a major American game company that produces popular games such as Call of Duty, for 1.687 billion dollars, or about 9 trillion yen in Japan yen.
The Competition and Markets Authority in the United Kingdom announced on the 26th that it would not approve the acquisition plan because it may hinder market competition.
According to the announcement, Microsoft already accounts for 60% to 70% of the global market in the "cloud gaming" space where data is managed on servers, and the acquisition will further enhance that advantage.
The Financial Times of the United Kingdom reported on the decision as "a major blow to the acquisition plan".
Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote on his Twitter account that the decision was "a decision that hinders innovation and investment in the UK" and indicated he would appeal the decision.
Judgments on the acquisition plan are divided in each country, and the FTC = Federal Trade Commission of the United States filed a lawsuit in December last year to block the plan because it may hinder market competition, while the Japan Fair Trade Commission announced that it would approve the plan because it would not restrict competition in the domestic game market.