I'm going to add my tuppence worth here: while people are doing to disagree on the figures used by both the CMA and the EC regarding cloud gaming, the response by the EC in regards to competition concerns is honestly kind of laughable.
Essentially, they say: "We acknowledge that the ABK purchase will make the cloud gaming industry less competitive. However, Microsoft have promised us they'll make some ten year deals and that it's in their interest to keep games multiplatform, and we believe them."
There are also some interviews with EC leaders post-publication where they essentially say it'll be really easy to monitor these sorts of behavioural remedies, and won't be a problem for them at all. This is in relation to Microsoft, the company that's had more antitrust suits brought against it than any other company in history.
I would say I'm surprised, but honestly the EU has always been a lot more neoliberal and pro corporation than a lot of people realize.
What are the specific quotes the EU commission said that you have an issue with?
A 10 year contract would be legally binding and enact MS to put Acti/Blizz games on 3rd party cloud platforms; where they otherwise never would. This isn't a handshake agreement it would be a legally bound contract that would likely include heavy fines or outright stop distribution of Acti/Blizz games if MS is found not abiding to it. The bullet point in your earlier post states that it would only be harmful if MS restricts the games from being made available on third plarty cloud services, the behavioral remedy would prevent this (for a minimum of 10 years) and is what the EC expects to happen.
Here is what the EC Leader said according to MLex report:
"She pushed back at the idea that the "behavioural" remedy accepted might be hard to monitor or enforce. A commitment to license all-comers for free was "very simple" and "not hard to monitor," she argued. Non-compliance would be obvious to anyone seeking a license."
I agree with her. Non-compliance would be very easy to see because of how open MS has been about which third party cloud companies they have contacted and made agreements with. If a company goes to the EC and says "MS is lying or being dubious about the details of the contract" EC would come down on them hard. They are essentially saying "we believe we will be able to regulate MS over the course of the 10 years as an independent body depending on the actions they take."
Pointing out MS under a different CEO and time period where they had 90% market share of PC's doesn't hold much weight today though, does it? Especially when they are seemingly willing to be more cooperative with regulators than they ever have before.
Looking at MS today in the gaming industry specifically they are competing in a market where they are a distant third place globally, and as such are trying to establish themselves in a nascent market (Cloud Gaming) to find a more sustainable revenue stream. I will say they are a massive corporation still (trillion dollars in unfathomable to me), but you have to look at this from the Microsoft Gaming lens as well.
I understand some people are against the merger because consolidation generally leads to less choice and options, but as of right now the deal and proceeding contracts would ensure more games on more platforms available to more users. And this is all before we even get into the weeds of CMA's own analysis and how funky their "60-70% of cloud gaming is controlled by MS" data is.
Like I said earlier this really is a one of one case, and will be intriguing to follow but suggesting the EC was the one off and laughable is just plain weird. And stating they are neoliberal and pro-corporation to invalidate their reasoning just seems like mudslinging especially if we are looking at the current state of the UK which I would say is outright conservative.
EC had more thoughtful analysis and provided actual insight, nuance, and data into both Console and Cloud gaming markets where CMA did not.
