There's a book called The Media Monopoly that details how media companies have consolidated to just a handful of mega corps and the book had to be republished 5 times since the 80s because every few years the number keeps shrinking dramatically. The author later released a brand new book called The New Media Monopoly which is essentially the 7th edition of the original book and at this point we're in a fucked up late stage version of the problem he originally detailed.

From the Wiki on the author:

In 2000 Bagdikian stated, "Every edition has been considered by some to be alarmist and every edition ends up being too conservative." In this latest version, Bagdikian wrote that the number of corporations controlling most of the media decreased to five: Disney, News Corporation, Time Warner, Viacom, and Bertelsmann. He argued, "This gives each of the five corporations and their leaders more communications power than was exercised by any despot or dictatorship in history."

The Onion is a bit too accurate sometimes.

Bill Clinton, chief executive of U.S. Government, a division of MCI-WorldCom, praised Monday's merger as "an excellent move."'

LMAO

Bill Clinton, chief executive of U.S. Government, a division of MCI-WorldCom, praised Monday's merger as "an excellent move."

I'll be... they even predicted the "sovereign citizen" movement!

Taco Bell won the franchise wars

The Onion always tells factual stories. They're just stories from the future.

No you see it’s OK to lie to the court when you’re rich or a multinational company

I will literally never understand why the word of a corporation has any weight if it isn't bound by law.

You need to force corporations to act if it's against their own interests.

It is because the billionaires write the laws through ALEC. The only part of the system which isn't working as intended is that they had to make any promises in the first place.

The only way to fight back is with your wallet. Unfortunately we are SUBSTANTIALLY outnumbered. It is what it is.

This is why I have no qualms about piracy. The workers get shafted either way.

The FTC argued this would happen, it's the court that swallowed Microsoft's tripe. This is the FTC's "I told you, bro!"

The FTC knew it was coming, and tried to stop the merger. But they got shot down in the courts, because a judge believed Microsoft was going to be benevolent and not immediately lay off all of the acquired company’s employees.

This is the FTC’s way of publicly slapping the judge.

The FTC tried to stop the merger, it’s not their fault. Blame the courts.

Yeah but 1,900 staff, come the fuck on that’s a mass exodus not a layoff. I’m in a company of 300+ people and it’s a HUGE number of people, I can hardly process over 6x as many layoffs…

I don’t think I’ve seen a game studio acquisition happen without layoffs of some sort. Doesn’t make it right, but it does seem like a horrible routine.

It really depends on if the layoffs were done because they were duplicate people for the same job position, versus clearing house so that the stockholders are happier by having better profits.

Well I for one am shocked to see a megacap do significant layoffs after M&A, talk about breaking with tradition!

Corporations aren’t people and don’t have morals to stop them from breaking promises or just flat out lying

I think this is pure bullshit. In the end corporation are guided by people, who make decision and have a clear chain of command. When a corporation promise something, there are people behind that signed off the promise.

And you can punish a corporation by simply punishing the people who sign off what the corporatoion does, at any level. I mean, it is good to be the CEO and get the big bucks, fine, but if the corporation you are CEO of does something wrong it is your responsability to fix it and take the punishment for it.

It was more than just managers and redundant positions that were laid off. And it was mostly blizzard employees laid off specifically.

Also

/no please don't attack this innocent multi trillion dollar company

As far as I understand the circumstances, because Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard are both US companies, they ultimately fall under US regulation except for any of their offices/holdings in other countries, where they have to abide by the local laws. The reason the FTC is upset now is that Microsoft had said that Activision-Blizzard was largely going to be its own independent company under the Microsoft brand, so these layoffs go against those promises - especially with the wording about removing "overlap" between the companies, which points to them firing people at Activision-Blizzard who had the same job as people already working at Microsoft. The only reason that they'd do that is if they're not actually letting Activision-Blizzard run on their own and are going to be merging the company into Microsoft more than they had said they would.

I do remember something about the UK signing off on the merger, so I assume that there are some countries that did their own "due diligence" and approved the acquisition, but a majority of these layoffs are in California by the sounds of it, so all any of them could really do at this point is hold Microsoft liable if they don't follow local labor laws about severances and the like. I assume that they felt the same way as the FTC, in that the promise of Activision-Blizzard running on their own meant that there was little concern about monopolizing the industry.

They're filing an appeal to undo the merger. What more do you want?