While Sony is doing everything it can to block Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a recent statement submitted to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) may be Sony's most feared since the deal was announced.The Verge (opens in new tab) In a lengthy statement to the CMA this week (opens in new tab) found by The Verge (opens in new tab), Sony asks the regulator to consider certain things.

The PlayStation maker has asked the CMA to imagine a scenario in which "Microsoft releases a PlayStation version of Call of Duty, with bugs and errors occurring only after the game's final levels and later updates. Since "most Call of Duty games are purchased within weeks of release," Sony says, it wouldn't matter if "such degradation is quickly detected" and fixed: fickle players have already "lost faith in 'Call of Duty' as a place to play," Sony says. PlayStation" as a place to play "Call of Duty," and perhaps, unthinkably, switch to Xbox.

Sony cannot take Microsoft's recent agreement promising to provide COD on Nintendo and Nvidia platforms (open in new tab) for at least 10 years as proof that Microsoft will operate in good faith if the Activision deal goes through says. In fact, "if Microsoft acts in a way that grants access to 'Call of Duty' to its rivals, the risk to consumers could be greater, not less," Sony says. The reason is that "there are myriad ways in which Microsoft could withhold or diminish access rights that would be extremely difficult to monitor and police."

By "myriad ways," he refers to the various small tweaks that Activision, a Microsoft subsidiary, could hypothetically make to COD to make it worse on non-Xbox platforms. It could be something like a bug or performance issue that is discovered too late, as mentioned earlier, or it could be "degrading 'Call of Duty' by ignoring PlayStation-specific features (e.g., better controller haptics)."

To be fair to Sony, such issues could arise "without any active decision on Microsoft's part to degrade 'Call of Duty' on PlayStation," and instead "could simply be the result of Microsoft's . due to different post-transaction incentives." That in itself is not so unreasonable: if ActiBlizz game developers are more familiar with Xbox internals thanks to their close working relationship with Microsoft, an unintended consequence may be that bugs on that platform may be squashed more quickly.

But it doesn't end there. Shortly after this section of the submission, Sony went on a whirlwind history tour of all the legal troubles Microsoft has gotten into for failing to keep its commitments and official statements, and these "what if" scenarios, if Microsoft is allowed to buy Activision, It's hard not to read Sony as hinting that it might begin to subtly and deliberately sabotage rival platform COD.

For a multi-billion dollar company, any malfeasance is hard to overlook, but the idea that Microsoft would intentionally produce a deactivated version of COD for a non-Xbox platform, jeopardizing the revenues derived from it and public opinion when the move makes the news It is hard to imagine that it would be condemned. Nevertheless, the CMA may be convinced: the UK regulator has been quite skeptical of acquisitions in the past, even suggesting (open in new tab) that Activision be dissolved (as expected, Microsoft was not keen) before allowing Microsoft's acquisition.

Sony seems increasingly desperate to block the Activision acquisition, going so far as to accuse Microsoft of "outright harassment" for demanding access to management performance reviews.