Last month, an antitrust lawsuit filed by gamers against Microsoft was temporarily kicked to the curb, as the judge hearing the case ruled that the original challenge lacked sufficient detail and gave the plaintiff 20 days to refine the suit’s arguments. Sure enough, the lawsuit has been re-filed, and this time it features the “additional factual detail” promised by the plaintiff’s law firm in the form of sales figures, internal memos, and other documents from Microsoft.
The suit itself once more zeroes in on access to Call of Duty and makes many of the same assertions in the previous challenge, only now it has redacted statements and charts sprinkled throughout, including projected global sales revenue, data that prop up the importance of access to AAA games both for Microsoft and the industry at large, documents and deposition testimony related to game release timing, and references to a strategy memo and business reports that were provided to Microsoft’s board of directors.
Microsoft is once again brushing off the lawsuit as erroneous. A spokesperson for the company repeated the company line of its Activision-Blizzard buyout as a way to bring more games to more people and said the refiled challenge is full of “unsupported and implausible claims about the deal’s effect on competition.”
