Activision-Blizzard buys back their shares from Vivendi.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20130725006767/en/Activision-Blizzard-Announces-Transformative-Purchase-Shares-Vivendi

wat wat

This is pretty big news.

So that's where last years subscriptions went to.

Why would Vivendi want to lose a partner company like this? Call of Duty and Warcraft are still gonna be huge hits even several years from now, and will still be raking in tons of sales. So what gives? Was Activision/Blizzard getting too demanding for their tastes, or did the execs in Vivendi suddenly lose taste in the videogames industry?

The somewhat short answer is that Vivendi was losing big money (some reports says making debt as large as 10 billion dollars) from what it considers as its main business, the telecommunication division, so they wanted to cover that dept with the profits from their profitable assets, in this case Activision Blizzard. At first Vivendi wanted to sell AB, but AB is way too goddamn big for anyone to buy, so Vi then decided to abuse their majority shareholder status to just extort money from AB (reports vary from 1 to 3 billion dollars), repeat if necessary, and if AB is weak enough by then, sell them.

AB decided that they wanted no part in that BS, so they bough themselves out, with the sum that greatly exceeds Vivendi's initial extortion target, and their debt made them desperate enough to accept this short-term transaction.

edited 26th Jul '13 11:11:23 AM by Shinr

I still don't expect Blizzard's level of quality and customer respect to return to the levels they had in the old days until Robert Kotick is gone. People who live their lives with dollar signs in their eyes 24/7 should not be running game studios. Or much of anything, for that matter (look where it got us so far).

I don't know how much Vivendi micromanaged their game studios, but they can hardly be worse than Kotick, so to the extent that this turn of events means he gets more power, it's probably a bad thing. I'm guessing that for the time being it probably won't have much effect on what games get made and how. Now, Blizzard getting away from Activision, that would be news.

There's very little reason for Activison or Blizzard to change their strategies, because a large amount of their fanbase will buy their games simply due to their popularity and reputation. I doubt losing the hardcore fanbase would hurt them that badly to make them consider otherwise by this point, because said fans have likely already moved on.

Originally posted by Tam H 70 on the World Of Warcraft thread.

A U.S. court HSS delayed the deal after a major stockholder appealed the deal wasn't subject to a stockholder vote.

This is elevating things to the "pass the popcorn" stage. I wonder if this will actually go to the televised coverage stage or not?

It seems to me that Blizzard Entertainment is and has been for some time the only profitable portion of the Vivendi-Activision-Blizzard empire.

I don't think Blizzard is big enough for the mass media to care. The issue isn't very interesting either, since it's mostly a matter of how the corporation was set up. Actually, isn't Vivendi based in France? So it's just a matter of interpreting French incorporation law.

I think it doesn't work like that. If an American judge thinks his court has a role in a corporate battle, then his court has a role in a corporate battle. The company could be incorporated in Neilston in Scotland and he would still want his say.

He has jurisdiction, but he applies the applicable law of wherever the cause of action accrues. Since the cause of action is the workings of an international corporation, the American court has jurisdiction over the issue even if American law doesn't. Unless they determine there to be some fundamental right being violated, which is unlikely.

edited 19th Sep '13 9:11:16 AM by Clarste

You could be right on that. I would love a quick look at the plaintiff's suit though, and the reasons why the judge gave the injunction would also be interesting.

Well, the basic principle is pretty common-sense: people shouldn't be able to choose which laws apply to them. If you could work around a law completely just by suing in a different court things would get very weird very fast.

That said, that happens anyway because different courts have different procedures about how to determine which law applies.

And the judge gave the injunction because there's a prima facie case. If there's even the slimmest chance that the plaintiff could be right he deserves to have the deal put off while the trial is ongoing. There only reason not to grant the injunction would be if there's literally a 0% chance of success, and the judge can determine that before even seeing the evidence.

edited 19th Sep '13 9:27:28 AM by Clarste

Well, that kind of happens in Britain at the moment, that shopping around for a more compliant court thing. We are not known as the world's capital for libel cases for nothing, you know.

Libel is funny because it's unclear where the damage occurs. Where is your "reputation" located? Apparently in Britain.

Yep. See "Mc Libel." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case

That was fun for all the family. This case pretty much has to end up in court at some point, or does one of those poxy "out of court settlements" that are a BANE of transparent and open justice seem more likely?

While not necessarily applicable in this case, the reason that most EUL As and other contracts these days include a line indicating that litigation will happen in a given state's jurisdiction is to avoid the situation of unfavorable jurisdictions and/or confusions over whose law applies. As with almost anything in a contract, it's subject to challenge, but it does create an additional barrier if someone tries to claim that a given aspect of the contract isn't legal in Elbonia, where they signed it.

EDIT: Ah, he's a shareholder.

edited 19th Sep '13 12:07:58 PM by Grounder

"Favorable" often just means "the place we're most physically located", for what that's worth, and those clauses are mostly about "this is the district whose law we're most directly beholden to." I realize that it can create a disparity for distant users, but I can't see any entity wanting to be beholden to hundreds of different, often conflicting sets of law.

They're beholden to law wherever they "purposefully avail" themselves which in this context means they either advertise or sell stuff there. The purpose of forum selection clauses isn't to avoid being beholden to law, but to make things as certain as possible for them so they're lawyers don't have to frantically research the procedures of some foreign court.

edited 19th Sep '13 12:57:42 PM by Clarste

Most of the time the choice of venue will be in the same place their main HQ is though. While that in itself tends to gravitate toward what the company head considers favorable law, having the venue be in a radically different location makes it a lot more suspicious.

Plot twist!

Apparently the offer will automatically expire on October 15, so by delaying it with this court injunction the plaintiff is actually removing any chance of it ever occurring. The bit about the wanting to vote on it is just a pretense.

Ah, strategy. Beautiful in any form.

So basically this guy is having a temper tantrum, then.