Metaverse May Pose New Competition Challenges, Says EU Antitrust Chief

The European Union’s competition commissioner has called for the metaverse to face more scrutiny.

In an interview with Politico, digital chief Margrethe Vestager said plans to craft a comprehensive virtual reality environment will be the latest challenge for antitrust regulators.

The metaverse has been linked to strategies by Meta, formerly Facebook, to build shared virtual spaces. It would allow users to work, play and interact in digital environment designed to recreate the real world.

“The metaverse will present new markets and a range of different businesses, Vestager told the news outlet. “There will be a marketplace where someone may have a dominant position. Things are happening that we need to be able to follow.”

While Meta has been out front with ambitious schemes to build its own metaverse, it is not alone.

Others have joined the budding sector, including Decentraland, the user-owned, Ethereum-based virtual world where users can play, explore and interact with games and activities. It allows users to purchase virtual land on which to build environments, marketplaces and applications.

Learn more: Experiential Marketing Meets Social Commerce in the Metaverse

There’s also Sandbox, which works as a virtual environment independent of your computer and your network. It has been called a testing environment for software developers.

Vestager insists it’s time to analyze these markets and others that are expected to grow across the metaverse and the possible abuses of power that could come with them.

“We should start thinking about it now,” Vestager said, adding that the likely increase in the use of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) within the metaverse could also be an area to follow closely.

In terms of a deep probe into the metaverse’s economic model, it is still in its early days, Vestager said. But an examination into possible abuses that may arise cannot be ruled out.

“We’re trying to figure out how to ask the right questions,” she told Politico.