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Sept 15 (Reuters) - Britain's antitrust watchdog said on Thursday it would launch an in-depth probe into Xbox maker Microsoft's $69-billion purchase of "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard after the tech giant failed to offer remedies to soothe competition concerns.

Meta's virtual reality network Horizon Worlds, currently the centerpiece of its metaverse endeavor, is suffering from bugs and not being used very much by the very employees who are building it - new internal documents reveal

The CMA said merging Activision with Microsoft could allow the tech giant to use games to 'damage' competition in the growing market for cloud gaming, which allows consumers to stream games to their devices in a manner similar to Netflix's offering for movies and TV shows.

Apart from the core gaming sector, Tencent is also looking to snap up global assets, in particular in Europe, related to the so-called metaverse, said one of the sources and another source with direct knowledge of the matter.

The company, which had a bumpy time after the bug-ridden launch of "Cyberpunk 2077" game in late 2020, said it started conceptual work on an entirely original project, outside of the Cyberpunk and The Witcher sagas.

Apart from new games, CD Projekt said it planned to set up a new studio in North America, adding multi-player to the majority of future projects, and further expansion of its franchises into film and TV.

In a September 15 memo to employees obtained by , Meta's VP of Metaverse, Vishal Shah, pkvgamessaid the team would remain in 'quality lockdown' for the remainder of 2022 in order to 'ensure that we fix our quality gaps and performance issues before we open up Horizon to more users.'

Tencent in September raised its stake in Ubisoft in a deal that made the Chinese firm the single biggest shareholder of the top French games developer, with a stake of 11% which can be further increased to as much as 17%.

Britain's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said earlier this month the takeover of the videogame publisher maker could hurt competition in gaming consoles, subscription services and cloud gaming if Microsoft refused to give competitors access to Activision's best-selling games.

HONG KONG, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Tencent is resetting its M&A strategy to put more focus on buying majority stakes mainly in overseas gaming companies, as the tech giant eyes global expansion to offset slowing growth at home in China, people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

'I will say that this case is definitely a time to remind parents that it's very important to know who your children are friends with, whether that's in the classroom, social media apps, Snapchat, TikTok and then also gaming platforms.' 

"Our core activities and values remain unchanged. We want to create revolutionary role-playing games with memorable stories that inspire gamers," the company's chief executive Adam Kicinski said in a statement.

'But currently feedback from our creators, users, playtesters, and many of us on the team is that the aggregate weight of papercuts, stability issues, and bugs is making it too hard for our community to experience the magic of Horizon. 

We want to guarantee PlayStation gamers continue to have the highest quality gaming experience, and we appreciate the CMA´s focus on protecting gamers." (Reporting by Amna Karimi and Radhika Anilkumar in Bengaluru and Foo Yun Chee in Brussels; Editing by Vinay Dwivedi and Susan Fenton)

Reuters previously reported that Microsoft would pay a $3 billion break-up fee if the deal falls through, according to a source familiar with the matter, suggesting the company was confident of winning antitrust approval.

From 2015 to 2020, the owner of China's number one messaging app WeChat 150 investments at home totalling $75 billion, compared to 102 deals worth $33 billion in overseas markets, according to Refinitiv data.

Meta's virtual reality network Horizon Worlds, currently the centerpiece of its metaverse endeavor, is suffering from bugs and not being used by the very employees who are building it - new internal documents reveal. 

In Europe, except for its purchase of majority stake in "Clash of Clans" mobile game maker Supercell for $8.6 billion in 2016, Tencent has for years mostly cut minority deals including its purchase of 9% of British gaming firm Frontier Developments.

Tencent's pursuit of bigger stakes in its existing gaming portfolio or new targets would give the company a bigger say in such firms' businesses and also help it secure the intellectual property rights of popular games, said the four sources.

Tencent's new strategy indicates how China's tech titans are looking to emerge from the regulatory shadows after two years of crackdown and uncertainty that weighed on their sales at home and triggered a massive selloff in their stocks.