"Your tax dollars at work," Blizzard Entertainment President Mike Ybarra quipped on Twitter. We look forward to reinforcing the strength of our case in court, again.”Īctivision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick told CNBC earlier this week that he'd “be surprised if they would waste taxpayer resources on something like. will remain among the 39 countries where the merger can close. “The facts haven’t changed," Activision Blizzard said in a statement. "We’re disappointed that the FTC is continuing to pursue what has become a demonstrably weak case, and we will oppose further efforts to delay the ability to move forward.” "The District Court’s ruling makes crystal clear that this acquisition is good for both competition and consumers," Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith said in a statement to Ars Technica. Still, the appeal filing itself shows that the FTC is not willing to give up easily in this high-profile case. The FTC is facing down District Court Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley's finding that the regulator "has not shown a likelihood it will prevail on its claim this particular vertical merger in this specific industry may substantially lessen competition."Īn appeal would have to convince a circuit court judge of some key unconsidered area of fact or law to overturn that decision, which could be a high bar in this case. The appeal notice, filed with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals late Wednesday, is a rare move for the FTC in cases like this. “That was when I realized how much valuable time a game could waste,” Donner said of hearing about Gates’ multi-office record chase.Further Reading Judge sides with Microsoft in FTC injunction, unlocking final Activision battlesThe Federal Trade Commission has given legal notice that it intends to appeal a recent district court decision that denied a temporary injunction in Microsoft's proposed merger with Activision. was a former Boeing executive, and he was not a humorful guy, so… the idea that Bill is sitting there after work, going into the president’s office so he could play Minesweeper, it was just weird imagery.” Ryan recalled the surreal experience of being called in by Bill Gates on a random weekend only to cluster around another executive’s computer and confirm a new Minesweeper high score of five seconds on a Beginner board. It’s on the machine in Mike Hallman’s office.’ And like, ‘What?’” “So… it was one Sunday afternoon, and we get email from Bill saying, ‘Hey, I think I just got a new high score. “Because the high scores were text file, we had a rule that somebody had to put eyes on your score,” Fitzgerald said. Ryan said Gates’ Minesweeper addiction got so bad that he “took it off his machine.” But that wasn’t enough to stop the CEO from getting his fix. The record for us right now I think is eight.’ (I think that was me, embarrassingly.) Apparently, the fact that the record was very close to where he was led him to make his mission. “I wrote back to him, I go, ‘Yeah, 10 seconds is really good. “Originally, I think I got a mail from Bill saying, ‘I just solved Minesweeper in 10 seconds. “He was like, ‘I tried it 20 times, it’s impossible.’” Ryan said he eventually had to go to Slade’s office and spend 10 minutes completing an Expert board before the marketer was convinced. “I was like, ‘It's not impossible,’” Ryan told me. Entertainment Pack Product Manager Bruce Ryan recalled getting an email from marketing colleague Mike Slade, who insisted the game’s Expert level was impossible and should be pulled. This was apparently a relatively common problem. “Whenever someone claimed to have found a bug, I asked them to send me a screenshot and then I had to point out their logic mistake.” But those “testers” weren’t strictly needed to refine the product, as Donner recalled. “It was, needless to say, a very well-tested piece of software around Microsoft,” added Charles Fitzgerald, a product manager for the first Windows Entertainment Pack, where Minesweeper would make its public debut. At that time at Microsoft, people were staying late into the night, so you’d see people taking breaks, 9 o’clock at night, playing a round of Minesweeper.” “It was one of those things where you would walk down the hall and you’d see it… on people's computers. “We never had to work very hard to find testers,” said Libby Duzan Nuttall, who served as Microsoft’s lead product manager for entertainment in the '90s. The early Windows version of Minesweeper became an instant hit on Microsoft's internal network when it released in 1990, according to people who worked there at the time.
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