PlayStation Boss Jim Ryan Said He Doesn’t Want New Call of Duty Deal, Activision Exec Claims

The ongoing saga of the Microsoft-Activision merger took another strange turn recently, when an Activision EVP claimed that PlayStation Boss Jim Ryan said the following statement in a meeting in February: “I don’t want a new Call of Duty deal. I just want to block your merger.”

Activision chief communication officer and executive vice president Lulu Cheng Meservey tweeted the quote on March 8, stating that Ryan said those words during a meeting in Brussels on February 21. Meservey has previously posted epic anti-Sony memes that garnered a lot of engagement on social media, including on that date in question. GameSpot has reached out to Sony for further comment.

Needless to say, this alleged quote would be quite revealing for PlayStation, given that the two companies have been publicly clashing over Microsoft’s blockbuster bid to buy Activision Blizzard. Sony has long claimed that the deal would hurt competition in the industry, focusing on potential Call of Duty exclusivity as one of the key vectors of harm.

Sony recently made headlines when it stated in court documents that it feared that Microsoft could intentionally “sabotage” Call of Duty on PlayStation in order to lure customers to Xbox. Microsoft has reportedly offered Sony a deal to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for 10 years–an offer that Nintendo and Nvidia signed–but Sony has refused. It’s still unclear if the merger will go through, with Microsoft recently telling EU authorities that it would not drop or sell Call of Duty in order to get the deal done.