The guardians of access to the Metaverse. (Re)thinking the European Union Competition Law

Abstract

Metaverse, a completely virtual space, is called to pose new challenges to the European Union Competition Law. The so-called technology giants are investing billions of dollars in developing new platforms, self-named metaverse. Among these, we can highlight the started projects of Epic Games, Roblox Corporation, Meta, or Microsoft. However, the average user is still confused about what this new market consists of or how it will be classified in antitrust terms. Thus, in this paper, we will focus on the definition of this new virtual world. Besides, we will study how the European Union new category: access guards, to designate those companies or higher volume platforms. Thus, they will have a set of obligations to guarantee a balanced and disputable interacting space in the market.