It looks like Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard is almost a done deal, set to close very soon, possibly this Friday, pending approval from the UK market regulator. However, if you’re excited about playing games like Modern Warfare 3 and Diablo 4 on Microsoft’s Game Pass, you might need to wait a bit longer.
Activision recently announced that they don’t plan to add Modern Warfare 3 or Diablo 4 to Game Pass this year. They do intend to work with Xbox to bring their games to more players globally once the deal is finalized, with the expectation of adding games to Game Pass sometime next year. So, you won’t be able to play these games for a Game Pass subscription fee anytime soon.
This decision seems a bit unusual. We’ve known that Call of Duty might not come to Game Pass until 2025 due to existing deals with Sony. Still, it’s unclear why Diablo and other Activision Blizzard games won’t be available sooner, especially considering that Bethesda games were added to Game Pass shortly after Microsoft acquired Zenimax.
The Microsoft-Activision deal faced some obstacles but received approval from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority after certain changes were made to address concerns about a potential monopoly in cloud gaming. While some people are worried about the consolidation in the gaming industry, I’m just a bit uneasy about what it all means, but that’s why I’m not running a national market authority.