Thursday night, hardcore action/adventure fantasy game Elden Ring took home top honors at The Game Awards 2022. Rival game God of War: Ragnarok took quite a few honors home as well. The two of them won pretty much any category in which they were nominated.

While this was happening, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it would take action to attempt to block Microsoft (which owns several game companies and the Xbox gaming platform) from acquiring video game company Activision Blizzard, the publisher of well-known games World of Warcraft and the Diablo series. The FTC argues that a union of these two massive tech companies could "harm competition" in the video game marketplace.

I brought up the winners of The Game Awards because neither Elden Ring nor the God of War series is published by any of Microsoft's gaming companies, nor by Activision Blizzard. They are published, respectively, by Bandai Namco Entertainment (publishers of the Dark Souls series and owners of Pac-Man) and Sony Interactive Entertainment (which owns Xbox's rival gaming platform PlayStation). In fact, only one game that won an award last night, As Dusk Falls, was published by either company (Microsoft's Xbox Game Studios).