We are delighted to share that articles authored by members of the CREATe team have been nominated for the Antitrust Writing Awards 2026, which celebrate outstanding scholarship and advocacy in competition and antitrust law.
The awards recognise some of the most influential publications from the past year and are decided through a combination of jury assessment and public reader vote. We warmly welcome support from colleagues, readers, and friends of CREATe who wish to see this work recognised.
Nominated CREATe Publications
Best Academic Article – Intellectual Property
Amy Thomas, Magali Eben, Kenneth Barr and Ayse Gizem Yasar
Competition in the cloud gaming market: proposing the innovation–creativity dichotomy
Interactive Entertainment Law Review, 8(2), pp 85-101 (2025)
[link to article] [link to vote]
Abstract: Cloud gaming technologies are reshaping the relationships between players, developers and platforms, raising questions about market dynamics and regulatory priorities. This article explores the development of cloud gaming technology and its regulation by competition law authorities by scrutinizing the concept of ‘innovation’ employed in recent high-profile inquiries, including the Microsoft/Activision Blizzard merger. In particular, the article argues that authorities’ focus on innovation overlooks the collaborative and iterative nature of creativity essential to the game industry’s diversity and growth. The article illustrates the potential risks to creativity in the cloud gaming market through two exemplary case studies. First, the article illustrates that through legal and technological restrictions, the scope for users to modify (‘mod’) cloud-based games and develop new post-release products is severely curtailed. Second, the article evidences how these limitations are heightened in developing virtual worlds (including the metaverse), forcing questions of interoperability and openness in business models. In both case studies, it is evident that the problems facing the sector go beyond those of monopoly to more fundamental issues of market dynamics and definitions. The article concludes by advocating for a recalibration of the values of competition law to account for the dynamic and process-orientated nature of creativity.
Read more about this research project here.
Best Academic Article – Digital
Konstantinos Sylianou and Bruno Carballa-Smichowski
‘Market’ definition in ecosystems
Journal of Antitrust Enforcement, jnae046 (2024)
[link to article] [link to vote]
Abstract: Despite the popularization of the concept of ‘ecosystems’ among academics and practitioners, ecosystems have so far failed to become a coherent unit of analysis in competition law. One of the reasons is that it is not yet apparent when ecosystem analysis should be preferred over standard market-based analysis, and we also lack empirical methodologies to define their boundaries. In this article we first describe contexts where formal definition of ecosystem boundaries (similar to market definition) is necessary or at least desirable to achieve quality analysis, and then describe methodologies on how to achieve that (hierarchical clustering, K-means clustering, network of complementarities, factor analysis, and snowball selection). Furthermore, we provide guidance on when each of the methodologies is pertinent. We describe the limitations of the substitutability, aftermarkets, and connected markets approaches in cases in which ecosystems are the main unit of analysis. Finally, we provide four examples of how, in such cases, these methodologies presented can be useful to practitioners: i) market inquiries, investigations, and pro-competition interventions; ii) designation of undertakings as having strategic market status; iii) conglomerate mergers and iv) calculation of fines and quantification of harm/effects.
This article has been cited in a decision by the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) of Brazil.
Student Paper Nomination
We are also pleased to see a nomination in the Student Paper category from CREATe’s 2025 Outstanding Dissertation series:
Sebastian Martin
Critical Hit to Innovation: Why Competition Law Must Embrace Creativity in Gaming
CREATe Outstanding LLM Dissertations, Working Paper 2025/11
[link to paper] [link to vote]
Abstract: This paper critically examines competition law’s current approach to innovation in the video gaming industry, arguing that its prevailing one-dimensional, outcome-focused framework – typically measured through R&D expenditure, patent activity, and content output – fails to capture the dynamics that genuinely promote competition and deliver value to gamers. It contends that the diversity, quality, and direction of innovation are equally important, and that these are best understood by accounting for the creativity and processes that underpin the sector. This is achieved by distinguishing between ‘innovation’ as the commercial implementation of novel products or methods, and ‘creativity’ as the original, often smaller, collaborative, and iterative processes that give rise to them, frequently driven by smaller competitors and users. This paper advances a ‘creativity lens’, incorporating creativity as a parameter of competition alongside traditional innovation metrics. This framework emphasises the openness, autonomy, and diversity of the creative processes through which games are made, modified, and distributed, prioritising the meaningful participation of users and indie studios. Applying a creativity lens to the Microsoft/Activision Blizzard merger demonstrates how an outcome-based focus overlooked harms to user creativity and indie studio innovation, particularly in the context of cloud gaming. This paper concludes that recognising creativity as a competitive factor better safeguards gamer welfare and fosters more meaningful, long-term innovation in the industry.