What could have been the largest all-cash acquisition in the UK’s history between Microsoft and Activision was struck down determinately, prompting the companies to restart their efforts. 

Microsoft is now building a new and restructured deal which is “substantially different from what was put on the table previously,” according to Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

According to her, the new deal will give Activision’s cloud streaming rights outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) to its rival, Ubisoft, allowing them to license Activision’s content to any cloud gaming provider. 

Under the new deal, Microsoft will not have the cloud rights to any existing or new games released by Activision in the next 15 years. This commitment does not include Activision’s games within the EEA. 

“This is not a green light,” said Cardell. “Any future decision on this new deal will ensure that the growing cloud gaming market continues to benefit from open and effective competition driving innovation and choice.”

The Statutory deadline for the CMA’s decision on phase 1 of the new investigation is 18 October this year. The UK remains the biggest hurdle between the merger going through, as the deal was already approved by the US, EU and a handful of other significant markets. 

The final decision on the original proposal was made just over one month after the CMA extended the deadline to resolve antitrust conflicts, and restructure the transaction to meet the CMA’s guidelines. 

The original £55 billion proposal was first blocked in April, when the CMA claimed the deal failed to address competition concerns in the cloud gaming sector. 

Microsoft later appealed the decision on the grounds that the CMA overestimated the role of cloud gaming in the gaming market as well as its unwillingness to consider solutions with industry and public support, according to Rima Alaily, Microsoft’s corporate vice president and deputy general counsel.

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One such industry solution was a ten-year agreement with Sony – Microsoft’s biggest gaming competitor – to keep the popular Activision game Call of Duty on Sony’s Playstation. This was done in an attempt to remedy the CMA’s position that massive Activision games would become Xbox exclusive following the merger. 

Call of Duty is a monolithic first-person shooter game, which surpassed $30bn (£23.4bn) in lifetime revenue last year, and boasts an impressive 70 million daily active users. Activision owns other such games with massive usership such as World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Candy Crush.