DG COMP | Understanding The Metaverse – a Competition Perspective

By: Friedrich Wenzel Bulst & Sophie De Vinck

Over the last two decades, our lives have become increasingly built on and around digital technologies. As a result, digital markets have become a central focus of competition enforcement. Following a flurry of reporting on the metaverse as the next digital frontier, this piece explores what we may expect from the metaverse and what that could mean for EU competition law enforcement. In particular, it gives a brief overview of a) current conceptions of the metaverse and its main components, b) what competition in the metaverse may look like and c) what challenges may arise for competition law enforcers.

What are the main elements of the metaverse?

The metaverse is many things at once: a buzzword, a vision of the future, a new version of the Internet, and perhaps most of all a concept around which there are still a number of question marks.