Reasons for buying up studios

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For example, Activision Blizzard faced a barrage of public allegations of workplace toxicity, which lowered its stock price and potentially lowered its sale price.

Other independent studios can take comfort in the fact that being bought by a large company means receiving reliable funding to develop multi-million dollar games.

“We’re starting to go multiplatform, you see,” Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan said of the Bungie purchase. “Philosophically, it’s not about dragging everything into the PlayStation world. It’s about creating huge and beautiful new worlds together.”

“I think we take a unique perspective, which is not that b2b email list everything has to work on one device or platform,” Microsoft CEO of games Phil Spencer said after announcing the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

The hype surrounding the acquisition of gaming giants is reminiscent of how streaming services have been picking up franchises and shows over the past five years.

One can recall NBC taking the series "The Office" and "Friends" from Netflix for exclusive placement on its Peacock service, or Amazon's offer to buy MGM.

Available content is part of the picture
While there are many game franchises that regularly receive sequels or operate in a live-service format (what Game as a service is), most of the industry thrives through new developments.

Sure, Call of Duty has been releasing one game a year since 2008, but Fortnite was just a modest idea from Epic Games five years ago.

These acquisitions are as much about what the studios will create as they are about what content they will bring with them. That's what Sony means when it says Bungie will create entirely new worlds in the future of intellectual property.

With each deal of this magnitude, there are fewer independent studios left in the industry. And this inevitably arouses the interest of regulatory authorities.