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Gaming Explainer

Who actually owns the games you play

You think you are playing a Microsoft game, or a Sony game. Often the company that really owns it is one you have never connected to it.

5 min read

You think you are playing a Microsoft game, or a Sony game, or just "a game." Often the company that really owns it is one you have never connected to it, sometimes on the other side of the world.

Microsoft now owns Call of Duty, Candy Crush, World of Warcraft, Diablo and Overwatch, after buying Activision Blizzard for about $69 billion in 2023. It also owns Minecraft, plus Elder Scrolls, Fallout and Doom. Sony owns the studios behind Destiny and Spider-Man. Tencent, a Chinese tech giant, owns all of Riot (League of Legends, Valorant), around 40% of Epic (Fortnite), most of Supercell (Clash of Clans), and a stake in Ubisoft. A few are still independent and publicly listed: EA, Take-Two (which owns Rockstar and 2K), Nintendo, and Roblox. Fortnite's maker Epic is not on the stock market at all. Its founder controls it, with Tencent, Sony and Disney holding chunks.

Translation: When one company owns dozens of the games you play, your spending across all of them flows to the same place. And when a game is owned by a giant in another country, decisions about it get made a long way from the people who play it.

Ask yourself
Before you assume you know who profits when you play, ask who actually owns the studio. The answer is often a company you would never have guessed, with goals that are not about your fun.

Two ways to see it

For: scale lets these owners fund enormous games and keep them running for years.

Against: fewer owners means less competition, and a handful of companies increasingly decide what games exist and what they cost.

References

Microsoft/Activision Blizzard deal (2023); Tencent holdings disclosures; Disney/Epic investment (2024).

This explains how something works. It is not telling you what to do with your money. Ask AYO does not give financial advice. We just translate. Decide for yourself.

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