Microsoft wins FTC lawsuit over Activision Blizzard acquisition. The court denied the request to temporarily block the acquisition. The consequences are not yet clear. The FTC can still appeal and the acquisition has been blocked in the UK.

“The FTC has not sufficiently established that, following the acquisition, it is likely that Call of Duty will remain unavailable on PlayStation consoles.” writes the judge. The regulator also failed to demonstrate that the acquisition would significantly reduce competition in the cloud gaming and game subscription markets. So there are no grounds to block the acquisition at the moment, according to the court. Microsoft President Brad Smith announced on Tuesday Happy with the judge’s decision. The FTC has not yet responded.

The FTC asked the federal court to issue a preliminary injunction in mid-June. This will temporarily block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision while the FTC conducts its own investigation of the deal. Without a preliminary injunction, Microsoft may complete the acquisition early. The FTC wanted to prevent this because an early acquisition would hinder its realization. The regulator was wrong on Tuesday.

Now that the verdict is in Microsoft’s favor, there’s a good chance Microsoft will complete the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Both companies are allowed to do so from July 15th. However, the FTC can still appeal the ruling. The British regulator CMA also blocked the takeover. Microsoft is fighting this ban. Tweakers recently wrote a seminal article about the battle between the FTC and Microsoft.