Activision Blizzard vows its games won’t disappear from PlayStation

In the wake of the news that Microsoft has entered an agreement to purchase Activision Blizzard, a lot of us undoubtedly have questions about what this acquisition means for players on other platforms. Specifically, we’re guessing that PlayStation players are wondering what this means not only for the future of Activision Blizzard games on their platform of choice, but also what will happen to existing titles. While we’re pretty sure we already know the answer to the first question, we now have a concrete answer to the second one.

Image: Microsoft

In an employee question and answer session that was submitted to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Activision Blizzard explains that it will “honor all existing commitments” with partners after Microsoft’s acquisition completes. So, for instance, if Activision Blizzard has exclusivity deals lined up with Sony for PlayStation 4/5, those commitments will still be honored once Microsoft takes over.

This comes as little surprise because it’s precisely the same approach Microsoft took when it purchased Bethesda and its subsidiaries in 2021. A good example of that is Deathloop, which was made by Arkane Studios and published by Bethesda as a PlayStation 5 console exclusive. Even though the game launched after Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda was complete, Microsoft didn’t break the contract Bethesda had previously entered into with Sony.

Activision Blizzard goes on to say that its content won’t be removed from any platforms, either. “As with Microsoft’s acquisition of Minecraft, we have no intent to remove any content from platforms where it exists today,” the Q&A notes. Therefore, if you’re a Warzone player on PlayStation, it sounds like your game isn’t going to go away after the Microsoft acquisition.

Activision Blizzard

Even better, it sounds like Activision Blizzard will continue to support those games, as well. “Activision Blizzard’s games exist on a variety of platforms today, and we plan to continue support those communities moving forward,” the company says elsewhere in the Q&A session, suggesting that existing games will continue to be supported.

The big question, of course, is whether or not Activision Blizzard games that aren’t bound to some kind of contract will still come to other platforms outside of Xbox and PC after Microsoft takes over. While neither company has given a solid answer to that question yet, we should probably assume that they won’t.

Before Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda closed, there was hope that at least some Bethesda games would still come to PlayStation in the future. However, shortly after the acquisition was completed, Xbox boss Phil Spencer went on record saying that Bethesda’s games would be exclusive to “platforms where Game Pass exists.” Microsoft will likely say the same thing about Activision Blizzard games eventually, and since Sony probably won’t allow Xbox Game Pass on PlayStation platforms anytime soon, we can fill in the blanks from there.

Of course, Microsoft has brought its first-party games to other platforms in the past (the Ori series getting Switch releases being a prime example), so it wouldn’t be unheard of for Microsoft to continue releasing select Activision Blizzard games on PlayStation consoles. Barring outright confirmation from the big M, however, we wouldn’t get our hopes up on that front, because that’s a really good way to wind up disappointed. In any case, we’ll let you know when Microsoft and Activision Blizzard share more, so stay tuned.