Agreed, shouldn't be in any kind of position if you ONLY have a Plan A

What makes it juicy is that Activision exec Lulu Meservey was the one who made the exchange public, as part of her campaign of Twitter attacks, and phrased it in a way that implied Ryan was responding to a deal with MS, not talks for a side deal with ABK in case the merger doesn't happen.

https://twitter.com/lulumes...

Reading the tweet again in light of this new testimony, it does seem to be written in a way that allows Lulu the out of claiming that she did not explicitly say Ryan refused to negotiate terms for CoD if it was acquired by MS.

Let's break it down:

"Microsoft offered Sony (the dominant console leader for well over a decade, with 80% market share) a 10 year agreement on far better terms than Sony would ever get from us."

That part is what primes people to think what follows is about talks for a post acquisition deal with MS for CoD.

"We've also offered Sony guaranteed long-term access to Call of Duty."

This is the line that introduces the ambiguity. Notice the "we've also offered," meaning she is now talking about a separate offer than the one MS made, this one from ABK. The significance of this is twofold:

1) Throughout the tweet, she never identifies who made the offer that Jim Ryan reacted to in Brussels. We now know from Jim Ryan's testimony that it was ABK, specifically Bobby Kotick, not MS.

2) That statement does not say whether ABK's offer pertained to post acquisition or a contingency plan in case the acquisition doesn't happen, nor would readers have reason to look for such a distinction when it was tweeted.

"But they keep refusing."

Keep refusing what exactly? We are being primed to believe their refusal also pertains to a request for talks in Brussels to negotiate a post acquisition deal, not a contingency deal. She hasn't revealed anything about a contingency deal.

"Why?"

More priming. She's about to give us the "why."

"The CEO of SIE answered that question in Brussels.

"In his words:

"I don’t want a new Call of Duty deal. I just want to block your merger.”

The tweet steers the audience toward the idea that Ryan reacted that way to requests to talks for a post acquisition deal. It does not identify that Kotick was the one who proposed talks, which may have led to questions about what authority Kotick had to do that (instead of MS) and may have led to more questions about the specifics.

Kotick makes millions no matter how this goes. Hell make a shit ton of money if it goes through, a few years with of money if it doesn't. Either way ABK execs get paid because if the agreement to get paid billions if the deal isn't closed by next month or so.

Ba dum tissss

100%
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You just won the internet today!!