The liberal entertainment industry is bad news. Everyone knows that. Sony is one of the worst of the bunch. It has never appeared to have a problem with using wads of cash to move the levers of government.
Wikileaks gave us a first-hand look into this sad reality when leaked emails showed how the top executive of this entertainment company convinced a key liberal California politician to vote to approve a $125 million government subsidy for his affiliated museum. According to the politician’s chief of staff, he requested the executive shell out $25,000 to a state super PAC. Two months after receiving it — woolah! — the bigwig at Sony got his $125 million ask.
The Department of Justice later indicted and charged this Democratic politician with bribery and corruption over another incident. But that hasn’t stopped Sony’s shady, backroom political deal making from continuing. It’s no wonder that the company, which inundates Democratic politicians and PACs with millions of dollars in campaign contributions annually, has received over $167 billion in state, local, and federal subsidies. If political history has taught us anything, it's that money talks.
Fast forward to the present, and Sony — one of the 150 richest companies in the world — is working with the Biden administration to shield itself from competition.
The company has dominated the gaming console market for two decades and doesn’t want Microsoft, its top rival, to acquire video game publisher/developer Activision.
Over the years, Sony has stopped at nothing to prevent its competitors from interfering with its dominant marketplace position. This has apparently included paying publishers not to distribute their games to Sony’s competitors. That’s the definition of anti-competitive.
Unlike Sony, Microsoft is all for expanding, not stifling, innovation and consumer access. The deals it recently made to distribute games on Nintendo and Nvidia’s platforms are a testament to this. If the company acquires Activision’s sizable library of popular games, it could mark the beginning of a free and open marketplace in the gaming industry. Competition will finally begin to flourish as the era of Sony making exclusionary deals to expand upon its monopoly status slowly begins to fade away.
Gasp! That, of course, is too much for Sony to handle, so it’s lobbying the Biden administration to block Microsoft from acquiring Activision. And it’s using nonsensical arguments (such as that the company will refuse to make Activision games available to competing gaming services when Microsoft has already signed four deals to prove otherwise) to rationalize its position.
Any neutral observer of this case would say Sony’s position is laughable. That said, the Biden administration does a lot of laughable things, and helping Sony is one of them.
The administration argues that the acquisition would “enable Microsoft to suppress competitors to its Xbox gaming consoles and its rapidly growing subscription content and cloud-gaming business.”
Seriously? Does it not realize that blocking this move is helping the gaming industry’s king of competition kiboshing?
Maybe the administration is trying to block the deal because it reflexively hates all corporate mergers and acquisitions. Or perhaps it’s just trying to do a solid for a top Democratic campaign donor. In either case, the government’s position is asinine, and there’s no denying that it’s helping a monopolist at the expense of innovation and consumer welfare.
Either way, it’s time for someone, somewhere to put an end to Sony’s use of big government to advance its own personal financial interests. While the executive branch has never seemed to have a problem with basing its decisions off political calculations, the courts are supposed to form theirs off facts and data, and they’re finally being given the opportunity to take on Sony’s duplicities. Here’s hoping they don’t squander it. It’s not hyperbolic to say that in many ways, the fate of the free marketplace is hanging in the balance.
Julio Rivera is a business and political strategist, Editorial Director for Reactionary Times, and a political commentator and columnist. His writing, which is focused on cybersecurity and politics, has been published by many of the most heavily trafficked websites in the world.