the eu antitrust chief on thursday defended the blocs decision to approve microsofts 69billion takeover bid for us video game giant activision blizzard despite the uks block on it but competition commissioner margrethe vestager admitted the split with britain raises questions xboxowner microsoft launched a bid for activision blizzard early last year seeking to establish the worlds third biggest gaming firm by revenue after chinas tencent and japans playstation maker sony activision blizzards hit titles include call of duty candy crush and world of warcraft and the move soon triggered competition concerns and in microsofts home us market federal authorities have gone to court to try to halt the dal last week brussels gave the takeover a green light just weeks after britains competition and markets authority cma blocked it arguing it would harm competition in cloud gaming the split is the most significant between eu and uk regulators since brexit vestager the european commission vice president told reporters in brussels that the eu was satisfied with the commitments made by microsoft that it would not make games exclusive to its own cloud gaming service where we diverged with the cma was on remedies we accepted a 10year free licence to consumers to allow them to stream all activision games for which they have a licence via any cloud service vestager said and why did we do this instead of blocking the merger well to us this solution fully addressed our concerns and on top of that it had significant procompetitive effects she argued but vestager noted the divergence raises important questions regarding our assessment our remedies policy and our cooperation microsoft filed an appeal against the cmas decision with the uk competition appeals tribunal on wednesday a company spokesman told afp microsofts bid is also under threat in the united states as well where the federal trade commission ftc launched a legal action to block it last year one of washingtons biggest ever interventions to stop tech industry consolidation it could be game over for the merger unless microsoft successfully fights off the challenges in britain and the united states