电子竞技生态系统的反垄断规制——以游戏版权独家授权为切入点

Antitrust Regulation in the E-Sports Ecosystem-Exclusive Licensing of Game Rights as an Entry Point

伴随着电子竞技全面进入特许经营时代,游戏市场迎来了“后独家时代”,电子竞技正在逐渐演变为一种以游戏发行平台为核心的数字生态系统。游戏发行平台通过抢夺游戏版权来抢占市场,并且借助网络效应来提高游戏版权市场的进入壁垒。同时,基于在游戏版权这个利基市场所形成的市场支配地位,游戏发行平台可以轻易控制职业联盟、电竞俱乐部、游戏直播等下游市场主体,从而逐步在生态系统内部的所有领域均实现垄断,最终达到生态垄断的状态。电子竞技生态垄断带来了一系列新型的垄断行为,在产业层面和社会层面造成了诸多负外部性问题。然而,以知识产权法还是反垄断法来规制版权滥用行为一直存在争议,著作权法难以完全厘清知识产权滥用带来的失衡竞争关系,反垄断法在适用上存在着难度。为此,我们需要结合电子竞技生态垄断的特点,从动态竞争的视域出发分析游戏创新和竞争者进入市场难度之间的耦合关系,以期对电子竞技生态系统进行有效的结构性规制,并提高司法实践中的规则适用性。

With eSports entering the franchise era,the gaming market has ushered in the‘post-exclusive era’,and eSports is gradually evolving into a digital ecosystem centred on game distribution platforms.Game distribution platforms seize the market by grabbing game rights,and raise the entry barriers of the game rights market through the network effect.At the same time,based on the dominant market position formed in the niche market of game rights,game distribution platforms can easily control downstream market players such as professional leagues,e-sports clubs and live broadcasting of games,so as to gradually realise a monopoly in all fields within the ecosystem,and ultimately reach the state of ecological monopoly.The eco-monopoly of e-Sports has brought about a series of new types of monopolistic behaviours,causing many negative externalities at the industrial and social levels.However,it has been controversial whether to regulate copyright abuse by intellectual property law or antitrust law,and it is difficult for copyright law to fully clarify the imbalanced competitive relationship brought about by intellectual property rights abuse.However,it has been controversial whether to regulate copyright abuse by intellectual property law or antitrust law.For this reason,we need to take into account the characteristics of eSports eco-monopoly and analyse the coupling relationship between game innovation and competitors'difficulty in entering the market from the perspective of dynamic competition,with a view to providing effective structural regulation of the eSports ecosystem and improving the applicability of rules in judicial practice.