Microsoft Corp. today said it has completed the acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc., nearly two years after announcing plans to buy the video game maker for $68.7 billion.

The development was not unexpected. Last week, a source told The Verge that Microsoft was seeking to finalize the deal today. Less than a month earlier, the company cleared the main regulatory hurdle to the acquisition’s completion.

Santa Monica, California-based Activision Blizzard is one of the world’s largest video game makers. It logged revenue of $2.2 billion in its most recent fiscal quarter, up from $1.64 billion a year earlier. The company’s earnings per share soared more than 80% in the same time frame.

Activision Blizzard sells video games under its own brand and also through two subsidiaries, King and Blizzard, that focus on different parts of the video game market. Blizzard has emerged as a key source of growth for the company in recent years. The unit’s sales jumped by about 160% year-over-year last quarter while its operating income more than tripled.

The primary obstacle to Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard was that, until recently, it didn’t have regulatory approval from the U.K.’s antitrust regulator. The Competition and Markets Authority, or CMA, launched an investigation into the deal shortly after it was announced last January. This past April, the regulator moved to block it.

Microsoft proposed two sets of antitrust commitments to alleviate the CMA’s concerns. The first proposal was rejected shortly before the regulator moved to block the acquisition in April. The second was accepted in September, which is what set the stage for the deal’s completion today.

The CMA’s concerns revolved around the potential impact of the acquisition on the market for cloud gaming services, which allow users to play hardware-intensive games via a browser. This removes the need to buy an expensive, gaming-optimized personal computer. The cloud gaming market is relatively small today, but it has expanded significantly.

The authority was worried that Microsoft could exploit the popularity of Activision Blizzard’s games to harm competitors. Microsoft offers a cloud gaming service via its Xbox unit. The CMA’s concern was that Microsoft might make Activision Blizzard content available exclusively on its own cloud gaming service, thereby limiting the ability of rival platforms to compete.

Microsoft nabbed the CMA’s approval by agreeing to sell the cloud streaming rights to Activision Blizzard’s entire game portfolio. Furthermore, the agreement covers all new titles Activision Blizzard will develop in the next 15 years. The streaming rights will be offloaded to a competitor called Ubisoft Entertainment SA.

Ubisoft, a major video game developer based in France, will license Activision Blizzard content to both Microsoft and competing cloud gaming providers. “With the sale of Activision’s cloud streaming rights to Ubisoft, we’ve made sure Microsoft can’t have a stranglehold over this important and rapidly developing market,” CMA Chief Executive Officer Sarah Cardell said in a statement today.

The commitments Microsoft made to win the regulator’s approval also cover a number of areas. In particular, the company pledged to make Activision Blizzard games available on not only Windows but also other operating systems. Additionally, it promised to add support for console emulators if asked to do so.

The acquisition’s finalization today comes less than a week before its Oct. 18 completion deadline. Had Microsoft not wrapped up the transaction in time, it would have had to pay Activision Blizzard a $4.5 billion termination fee.

The $68.7 billion deal is the largest acquisition in the history of tech history. The previous record holder was Dell Technologies Inc. with its 2015 purchase of data storage provider EMC Corp., which carried a $67 billion price tag.

Photo: Microsoft