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It is in the nature of big companies in the game industry to want to get even bigger. Activision and Vivendi are some of the largest bosses to be found in this particular game and they’ll probably be defeated only when a whole bunch of small companies will band together for a dungeon raid.[more]

We’ve just found out, via GameSpot, that Activision and Vivendi Games were given the good-to-go sign from the European Commission for their USD 18.9 merger. Some people in high places of both companies must have received the news with extra-sweaty palms and then just left the office to get stoned. After all, those anti-trust guidelines of the EC could have been a serious obstacle for Activision’s and Vivendi’s merging schemes. But the Comission thought about it and eventually said that the resulting giant "would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area or any substantial part of it".

Who knows, maybe they are actually right; after all, they did analyze competition issues both horizontally and vertically and still came up with some players who could yet provide serious challenges even to the future Acti-Blizzard. For instance, horizontally speaking, Electronic Arts and the console companies (Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft), will be worthy foes. Looking at the whole thing vertically, it seems that even if Activision would benefit from the fact that Vivendi owns Universal Music Group, publishers would still have a "sufficiently large portfolio of music rights from alternative suppliers.".   

The fusion between Activison and Vivendi will be complete by June. But you need not worry, oh ye great mass of insignificant and innocent gamers, this entire affair should not perturb the actual process of game creation. It will only affect the wallets of those sweaty-palmed guys mentioned above. And who cares about that, as long as we get Starcraft II and Wrath of the Lich King?