European Union antitrust authorities are taking a hard look at the metaverse to better understand its implications for consumers and competition as they mull moves to regulate the budding network of virtual worlds. Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s antitrust tsar, told an online event organized by German newspaper publishers that the emergence of the metaverse—a digital space where users can work, socialize, and play—poses new challenges for regulators as they seek to understand the technology and its implications more deeply before pressing ahead with regulations. “The metaverse is here already. So of course we start analyzing what will be the role for a regulator, what is the role for our legislature,” Vestager, who serves as the EU’s European Commissioner for Competition, said at the event. “Everything we do must be fact-based and based on the information that we can get. … We need to understand it before we can decide what …