Nearly four and a half years after Microsoft first announced its intent to buy Activision Blizzard, the legal chapter is officially closed. Microsoft reached a $250 million settlement on May 22 with AP7 (Sjunde AP-Fonden), a Swedish pension fund that had filed a class action lawsuit against Microsoft back in 2022.
The $69B deal is now settled
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What AP7 was actually suing for
AP7 claimed that shareholders who held Activision stock between January 2022 and October 2023 deserved additional compensation. If the fund had prevailed, Microsoft would have owed an extra 30 cents per share to those investors. That sounds small on a per-share basis, but when applied across Activision's entire shareholder base during that period, the financial exposure was substantial.
The settlement filing makes Microsoft's position clear. AP7's documentation states that "Microsoft is entering into this Stipulation solely to avoid the burden, expense, and distraction of continued litigation." This was a practical decision to close the book, not an acknowledgment of liability.
The long road from announcement to resolution
The Activision Blizzard acquisition was messy from the start. When Microsoft announced the $69 billion purchase in January 2022, it immediately triggered regulatory pushback across multiple countries.
The FTC fought hard to block the merger outright. Microsoft had to negotiate a series of concessions before regulators would approve the deal, including commitments to keep Activision titles available on competing platforms and through cloud gaming services like Nvidia GeForce Now. The acquisition finally closed in October 2023, but the legal battles didn't stop there.
What followed the deal closing wasn't pretty. Xbox laid off staff across multiple Activision Blizzard studios in several waves. The financial strain of the acquisition contributed to some genuinely divisive moves, including ending platform exclusivity for games like Starfield and Hi-Fi Rush, plus a significant Xbox Game Pass price increase that angered a lot of subscribers.
Xbox under new leadership, finally moving forward
The settlement arrives during a period of transition for Xbox. Earlier this year, Phil Spencer stepped down as Microsoft Gaming CEO, with Asha Sharma taking his place. Sharma has already made waves, including a controversial move to lower Game Pass pricing by cutting day-one access to future Call of Duty titles from the subscription.
Whether that strategy works out remains to be seen. But settling with AP7 does clear the final legal obstacle from an acquisition that fundamentally changed the gaming industry and cost Microsoft far beyond the purchase price in regulatory compromises, executive attention, and public perception.
Game Pass pricing shifted under Sharma
For players, the acquisition's real-world impact has been mixed. Call of Duty remained multiplatform. Overwatch and Diablo kept their cross-platform support. But the studio layoffs hit actual development teams, and the post-acquisition chaos left Xbox's first-party pipeline looking weaker than many anticipated when the deal was first revealed.
If you want to track what Xbox's restructured library looks like now, the game reviews section covers recent first-party and Activision Blizzard releases. For players trying to figure out what's still on Game Pass versus what's been pulled, the gaming guides hub is worth checking as the lineup continues to change under Sharma's leadership.
