Germany’s competition watchdog is investigating Facebook for tying its social app to its Oculus virtual reality headsets. Today, the Bundeskartellamt or Federal Cartel Office (FCO) announced a probe of the increasingly close link between Facebook and Oculus, arguing that it could hurt competition in both VR and social networking.
The new Oculus Quest 2 headset requires signing in with a Facebook account rather than a separate Oculus ID, and that’s raised antitrust concerns. “Linking virtual reality products and the group’s social network in this way could constitute a prohibited abuse of dominance by Facebook,” said FCO president Andreas Mundt. Mundt noted that Facebook is a dominant social network in Germany and plays a large role in…