Call of Duty should never have been taken off Steam, Microsoft has proclaimed in a new post-trial filing following its court victory against the Federal Trade Commission. The popular FPS franchise began its off-Steam adventure in 2018 with Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, and wouldn't end up returning until 2022, with the release of the new Modern Warfare 2 title, the success of which has prompted Activision Blizzard to release older franchise entries on Steam, too.
Following months' worth of legal kerfuffle between Microsoft, Sony, and the FTC in the United States, the judge ruled in favor of Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition, bringing the deal one big step closer to fruition. Now that the odds are more firmly on Microsoft's side, the company has submitted a fairly significant new batch of filings that discuss some of the key events leading up to its acquisition attempt.
One of the most interesting of these filings concerns Activision's decision to make the Call of Duty franchise a Battle.net exclusive in hopes of helping the platform grow. According to Microsoft, this tactic was a "resounding failure," and leaving Steam did not lead to substantial growth in Battle.net's user base. Microsoft plainly states that the plan did not lead to a substantial user base growth for Battle.net, while in roughly the same time period, Steam essentially doubled in size, jumping from 67 million users in 2017 to 132 million in 2021. Microsoft's conclusion was, therefore, that Activision failed to bank on exclusive access to Call of Duty​​​​​​.
The legal filing discussing these matters was submitted in response to the FTC's court decision appeal in the Activision Blizzard acquisition trial, with Microsoft arguing that Call of Duty alone isn't capable of uplifting an entire gaming platform all on its own. Even if a platform doesn't have access to Call of Duty, as was the case with Steam between 2018 and 2022, it can still see substantial success. In other words, even if Microsoft was to make Call of Duty an Xbox exclusive, doing so wouldn't signify a death knell for PlayStation.
At the same time, this hypothetical situation would never happen, according to Microsoft. The head of Xbox swore Call of Duty will stay on PlayStation for the foreseeable future, but the company is still attempting to build as foolproof of an argument as possible, with the FTC breathing down its proverbial neck. Though the fact that the court recently ruled in Microsoft's favor was a big boon for the acquisition, things could change in future still.
Moreover, Microsoft still needs to deal with the UK's regulatory authority as well. Notably, The CMA rejected Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and though the company did submit an appeal to the decision, it's currently unclear what the next step might be for its UK business deals.