What does the Digital Markets Act mean for mobile game developers?
The EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) was passed in November 2022 and at the time was heralded as a proverbial "game patch" set to rebalance the digital playing field. But fast forward to today, with the effects of the DMA now taking shape in reality, what does this all really mean for the games and interactive entertainment industry?
In a nutshell, the DMA is a new regulatory ‘level-up' to existing competition law rules in the EU:
Designation as a gatekeeper requires a company to have a significant impact on the EU market; provide a vital access point for businesses to reach end users, and to also enjoy an entrenched and durable position in the market.
To date, seven companies have been designated as “gatekeepers” (Google, Amazon, Apple, TikTok (ByteDance), Meta, Microsoft, and more recently Booking.com) in a total of 24 core platform services (CPSs). For the first six gatekeepers (designated in September 2023) the DMA’s prescriptive rulebook already applies (effective since March 2024), and a number of significant, high-profile policy changes have been announced by these firms as a result.
Notably, from a video game perspective, the most immediate impact of the DMA is likely to be in mobile gaming. Designations include Apple and Google's mobile app stores (i.e. key channels for game distribution), as well as their mobile operating systems (the playing fields which dictate the technical boundaries a game is developed and played within).
Although there are no gaming specific designations, make no mistake, the DMA is still a multiplayer game. The DMA will have a significant impact on those gaming industry players who are partners, customers and even competitors of these gatekeeper firms, so it's important that all players properly understand these new rules of the game.
The DMA rulebook itself is quite dense and framed broadly to apply across various digital markets, without specific tailoring to the intricacies of the video gaming industry. In practice, the matrix of
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