Microsoft's purchase of Bethesda has been approved by The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
While it's not the final hurdle for Microsoft to clear - the acquisition still has to be approved by the European Commission - the "Notice of Effectiveness" filed Stateside earlier this week does bring the takeover one step closer to completion.
Microsoft is still awaiting the judgment of the European Commission, however, and the provisional deadline for antitrust regulators to clear the deal and ensure it doesn't break the rules around industry competition - March 5 - has passed without public comment.
Legal documents stated that Microsoft will acquire "sole control of the whole of Zenimax" and that process will be accomplished via "a newly created Microsoft subsidiary ('Vault')" which "will be merged with and into Zenimax".
In a staff Q&A session Google Stadia’s general manager Phil Harrison reportedly “pointed specifically to Microsoft’s buying spree and planned acquisition of Bethesda Software later this year as one of the factors that had made Google decide to close the book on original game development".” This, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic and the “rising costs of game development” were apparently also a factor in the decision.
