EU Names 9 Game Giants Over In-Game Currency Rules

On September 30, 2026, Europe's consumer watchdogs made their biggest move yet against confusing virtual-money systems in video games. The Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) Network — the body that coordinates consumer authorities across the EU — adopted a joint statement with the European Commission launching coordinated action to strengthen gamers' rights around virtual-currency transparency and fairness, as reported by Agence Europe. For the millions of players who buy skins, gems and battle passes without ever seeing a clear real-money price, in-game currency rules could be about to get a serious rewrite.

The CPC Network publicly named the nine companies whose games warrant further assessment: Crytek, InnoGames, King, the studio behind Candy Crush Saga, Mojang, the maker of Minecraft, Plarium, PLR Worldwide, Riot Games, whose Valorant ranks among the world's biggest competitive shooters, Supercell, creator of Clash of Clans, and Ubisoft, publisher of For Honor. Between them, those studios account for an enormous share of the mobile and PC games played across Europe — which means the action could reach deep into young gamers' wallets.

The scope is deliberately broad. Mobile hits like Candy Crush Saga and Clash of Clans reach players who would never call themselves gamers, while Minecraft and Valorant sit at the very center of youth gaming culture. Regulators appear to have chosen titles spanning casual and hardcore audiences — a sign they believe the transparency problem is industry-wide rather than limited to a few bad actors.

What the action demands from publishers

The headline demand is price clarity. Games must show the real-world prices of items instead of obscuring costs through virtual-currency exchanges, according to Agence Europe's reporting on the joint statement. In plain terms: when a skin costs 1,000 gems, players should see — clearly and immediately — how many euros or dollars that pile of gems cost to buy. The system it targets works like an arcade token machine: players swap real money for stacks of fictional coins, then spend those coins in amounts deliberately disconnected from anything familiar.

The action also backs a 14-day withdrawal right, including for unused virtual currency. Under long-standing EU consumer law, buyers of digital content can often cancel a purchase within two weeks — but game stores and publishers have not always honored that right for wallets of unspent in-game currency. The coordinated action makes clear that players who buy a pack of gems and never spend them should be able to get their money back within 14 days.

Consumer advocates have spent years arguing that virtual currencies are designed to cloud spending judgment. Players — including many teenagers — routinely buy currency in odd-numbered bundles that don't line up with item prices, leaving unspendable leftovers that quietly nudge them toward topping up again. Showing real-world prices at the moment of purchase is aimed squarely at that trick, as is the refund right for currency that sits unused.

Why regulators are acting now

This is not a bolt from the blue. The move follows the CPC Network's March 2025 Key Principles on in-game virtual currencies, according to reporting by PocketGamer.biz. Those principles spelled out how regulators believed publishers should treat virtual money — but the network found that a "high number" of companies had made no substantive changes despite years of talks. Naming nine of the biggest names in gaming is the enforcement phase: specific companies, concrete demands and national authorities lined up to follow through.

Ireland's Competition and Consumer Protection Commission is among the national authorities joining the effort, with the CCPC and EU consumer authorities launching joint actions into online gaming practices, according to a joint announcement reported by TechBuzz Ireland. That national-level participation matters: while the CPC Network sets the shared line, enforcement will happen country by country, where consumer agencies can investigate specific games and demand changes.

The industry, however, is pushing back. EU industry groups Video Games Europe and EGDF counter that the recommendations are not legally binding, according to PocketGamer.biz. Their position is that the joint statement amounts to guidance rather than law, and that publishers retain room to interpret how transparency duties apply to their games. For players, that means the fight is far from settled: regulators have named names, but how — and how quickly — anything changes on screen will depend on how publishers respond.

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Why it matters for everyday players

For everyday players, the practical effect — if publishers comply — would be beautifully simple: prices they can actually understand. A battle pass would be listed at the equivalent of ten dollars, not 950 made-up coins. A leftover pile of unused gems could be refunded instead of sitting in an account forever, baiting another purchase. That is a meaningful shift for anyone who has ever wondered where their money went after a late-night session in a mobile game.

It also signals where game monetization is heading. Publishers have built vast economies on the gap between real money and virtual tokens; regulators are now treating those economies like any other marketplace. For Gen Z players — many of whom have grown up inside these systems and never known anything else — the new in-game currency rules may be the first time the companies selling them digital goods are forced to price them like ordinary products.