World of Warcraft might not make it to the PC Game Pass catalog, either, should Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard go through.
This at least is what emerges from documentation sent to the CMA, the UK antitrust authority which is considering whether to give its approval to the move.
In fact, in Microsoft’s view, integrating a game with a monthly fee into a service that is itself subscription-based would be “technically very challenging.”
“A large part of Activision’s share of PC game publishing is World of Warcraft, a subscription title that is not part of any multi-game subscription service (a term used to describe subscriptions that give access to multiple titles, such as Game Pass, ed.) and would be technically very challenging to integrate into a multi-game subscription service,” the document sent to the CMA reads.
The issue would thus seem to be related precisely to World of Warcraft’s monthly fee model of sustenance, though unfortunately Microsoft in the document doesn’t go into details of the “technical challenges” that could hinder its entry into Game Pass.
In any event, therefore, that detail could turn the noses of all the gamers who hoped for WoW’s entry into the PC Game Pass catalog so they would no longer have to pay the monthly fee, which is actually higher than that of Microsoft’s service (9.99 euros versus 12.99 euros per month).
In just a few days World of Warcraft will be welcoming Dragonflight, a massive new expansion set in the Dragon Isles scheduled for Nov. 29, 2022.
