The Ratings Game: Why the U.K. is blocking Microsoft’s deal for Activision, and what comes next

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A U.K. regulator made the surprising decision Wednesday to block Microsoft Corp.’s deal for Activision Blizzard Inc. in a further sign of resistance to the power of Big Tech.

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority announced Wednesday that it would prohibit the $69 billion deal as the merger could hurt competition in the nascent market for cloud gaming. The decision comes after the agency said in late March that it no longer thought the deal would threaten console gaming, which is a vastly larger and more established…