City Research Online

Abstract

This chapter offers a broad analysis of the past, present, and potential future application of EU and UK competition law to video games companies. It covers enforcement of the law on anticompetitive agreements, merger control, and abuse of dominance, plus complementary regimes regulating the digital economy. Beyond providing an accessible overview for those without prior knowledge of competition law, the chapter also highlights peculiarities of investigations into the gaming sector vis-à-vis other areas of enforcement. Furthermore, the chapter identifies several practices by video games companies which have not yet been subject to scrutiny, but could be. It also explores the implications for gaming of the EU Digital Markets Act and UK Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act. While cloud streaming services and mobile gaming are significant beneficiaries of these new regulatory regimes, comparable obligations on digital games stores would require significant changes by the console giants.

Publication Type:	Book Section
Additional Information:	This is a draft chapter/article. The final version is available in Research Handbook on Interactive Entertainment Law edited by Gaetano Dimita, Yin Harn Lee, Michaela MacDonald, and Marc Mimler, published in 2026, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800883550 It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. Without limiting the author's and publisher's exclusive rights, any unauthorised use of this work to train generative artificial intelligence (Al) technologies is expressly prohibited.
Publisher Keywords:	Competition Law; Antitrust; Video Games; Digital Markets; Interactive Entertainment
Subjects:	K Law > K Law (General)
Departments:	The City Law School The City Law School > Academic Programmes
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

Export

Downloads