Someone needs to take the fountain pen away from Phil Spencer: the Xbox boss can't stop signing 10-year deals to offer Activision games (in the event of a successful acquisition) on various platforms: he's signed deals with Nintendo (open in new tab), Nvidia (open in new Open in new tab), Boosteroid and Ubitus (open in new tab) (which I had never even heard of before signing this deal), and offered Sony (open in new tab) and Steam (open in new tab), but neither showed interest.

Well, while we weren't looking, Phil went out and signed another 10-year contract with EE, one of the "Big 4 (opens in new tab)" cell phone networks (which is also an Internet service provider) in the UK, adding another deal to the pile. The deal was announced by Spencer in a tweet posted earlier today.

The deal is apparently about "cloud gaming," but sharp-eyed readers will note that the statement is completely devoid of any details about what it means to provide "PC games developed by Activision Blizzard" to the company that is responsible for my unstable 5G connection The keen-eyed reader will have noticed that this statement contains no details at all about what it means to offer the company responsible for my unstable 5G connection.

EE and Microsoft already have some sort of agreement in which the mobile network will offer Game Pass Ultimate subscriptions (which also give players in certain countries access to Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming service) to some customers The company is already in the process of doing so. Or perhaps EE is about to launch some unscrupulous streaming device (perhaps not this one).

We have contacted Microsoft to find out how this deal actually works and will update this article if we hear back.

The details of this type of agreement would be fairly unimportant to Microsoft. Microsoft has been entering into these types of agreements primarily to save face with regulators in various countries who are scrutinizing the Activision Blizzard acquisition.

Microsoft's game plan is to prove to agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission, the Competition and Markets Authority, and the European Union that it can be trusted not to abuse its control over Activision to unfairly distort the market. It wants to convince regulators that such a deal will not force them to get along for a decade and keep the newly acquired Activision's valuables to themselves. It seems to be working (open in new tab), but there is still time for Sony's lawyers to pull a trick out of their sleeves.