Antitrust is Turning Its Eye To Gaming

By: Stijn Huijts (The Platform Law Blog)

Last week, I spoke at the Video Games Bar Association’s annual summit which took place at devcom in Cologne, Germany. The event confirmed to me that gaming is where the innovative technologies of the future are in many ways already a reality today.

It was my contention at the conference that competition law is turning its eye to gaming. Why?

Why gaming is moving into the spotlight

First, many of the most eye-catching recent cases have centred around Big Tech. We have seen competition cases, including billion Euro penalties, involving Google, Amazon, Apple and Meta recently. As we have discussed in previous blog posts, these have covered widely diverging practices, from the App Store and Play Store rules to how Google self-preferences in Search, and from Amazon giving itself a better deal than independent sellers to Meta’s use of data. Some mergers have seen deeper scrutiny and some deals have been blocked.

When a sector comes under such intense scrutiny, competition authorities and policy makers acquire a deeper understanding of the companies involved. With respect to gaming, the idea has taken hold – not completely unjustified – that gaming is both a major revenue generator and an important area for innovation for these Big Tech firms…

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