The Activision-Blizzard Xbox deal seemed to be a thing of the past, but the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) continued to remain vigilant on the maneuver of the two companies, to the point of returning to file an appeal to try to block the acquisition.\ r\nThe story that has put Xbox Game Pass at the center like never before (you can also subscribe via Amazon) has focused the attention of the entire gaming world, and in particular of regulatory bodies. It appears it will continue to do so.\r\nThe FTC actually announced that it would continue to monitor the deal last September. The agency’s spokeswoman, Victoria Graham, explained it:\r\n\r\n«The FTC continues to believe that this agreement constitutes a threat to competition. Our current focus is on the federal appeals process.”\r\n\r\nThe decision comes after a US appeals court denied the FTC’s request to halt the acquisition in July, giving Microsoft assistance to find an initial agreement with the CMA.\r\nWhich then arrived on October 13th, with the CMA giving the green light to the acquisition of Xbox Activision-Blizzard in a decision that has already become the history of video games.\r \nStory that continues because, as reported by Games Industry, the FTC has launched an appeal to block the acquisition, again.\r\nThe lawyers representing the FTC and Microsoft appeared before a panel of three judges at the Court of United States Appeal from the Ninth Circuit. The FTC argued that District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, who rejected the government agency’s appeal for a preliminary injunction in July, had held the FTC to too high a standard.\r\nImad Abyad, an attorney representing The FTC argued that the government body only needed to demonstrate Microsoft’s potential to withhold games from other platforms, rather than argue that the deal is anticompetitive.\r\nAbyad said that Microsoft had done so in the past after acquired Zenimax in 2020, making some of its titles exclusive to the Xbox platform, and explaining how the current appeal decision was reached:\r\n\r\n”I can’t understand how to give someone a monopoly on something would be pro-competition. It may be a benefit to some classes of consumers, but that is very different from saying it is pro-competitive.”\r\n\r\nRakesh Kilaru, representing Microsoft, said Judge Corley’s ruling presents \