The video game industry went on a shopping spree in 2021. Epic Games bought Mediatonic (Fall Guys), Sony bought Housemarque (Returnal), and Embracer bought Gearbox (Borderlands). It seemed like things might slow down in 2022, but instead they ramped up even more into an acquisition free-for-all. What will the future bring? Nobody knows. But the biggest companies in gaming are throwing billions around to try to buy their place in it.
So far, Microsoft has been ground zero for the M&A apocalypse. Having already bought Bethesda and half a dozen other studios, it set its sights on the seventh-biggest gaming company in the world: Activision Blizzard. While the opportunistic $69 billion deal is still at risk of being torpedoed by regulators in Washington and beyond, it’s become the most visible harbinger of industry consolidation speeding up rather than slowing down. Investors proceeded…
