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On April 15, 2011, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York seized and shut down Pokerstars and several of its competitors' sites, alleging that the sites were violating federal bank fraud and money laundering laws.
Pokerstars is banned in China, Israel, and all Muslim countries in the Middle East. Most Asian players are from: India, excluding states where online poker is legal: Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Assam, Odisha, Sikkim, and Gujarat.
The news was announced on Sunday by Microsoft’s gaming head Phil Spencer. “We are pleased to announce that Microsoft and 📉 PlayStation have signed a binding agreement to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard,” Spencer 📉 tweeted. “We look forward to a future where players globally have more choice to play their favorite games.”
A Microsoft spokesperson 📉 subsequently confirmed to The Verge that the deal would last for a term of 10 years, and covers Call of 📉 Duty only — not any other Activision Blizzard games. That puts it on a par with agreements Microsoft had previously 📉 signed with Nintendo, Nvidia, and others.
Microsoft president Brad Smith also commented, saying, “From Day One of this acquisition, we’ve been 📉 committed to addressing the concerns of regulators, platform and game developers, and consumers. Even after we cross the finish line 📉 for this deal’s approval, we will remain focused on ensuring that Call of Duty remains available on more platforms and 📉 for more consumers than ever before.”
The signing of the deal marks the end of a long stalemate, during which Microsoft 📉 made repeated public offers to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation, while Sony dismissed these and instead attempted to use 📉 its leverage with regulators to sink Microsoft’sR$68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard completely. “I don’t want a new Call of 📉 Duty deal. I just want to block your merger,” PlayStation boss Jim Ryan reportedly told Activision executives on the day 📉 of a meeting with European Union regulators in February.
PlayStation’s strategy was to use Call of Duty to convince regulators the 📉 merger would kill competition in the console market, because Microsoft would withhold the games from PlayStation or release inferior versions 📉 there. But this strategy was none too successful. EU regulators were satisfied with the assurances offered by Microsoft, while the 📉 U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority eventually conceded it was in Microsoft’s interest to keep Call of Duty available to PlayStation’s 📉 huge audience, and switched tack in its opposition of the deal to concerns around cloud gaming.