A videogame shop can ask a player to make two purchases: first acquire a virtual currency, then exchange it for an item. Europe's consumer authorities are testing whether that extra step makes the cash price harder to understand or pushes players to buy more currency than they need. The financial issue is the design of the transaction, rather than the entertainment value of the game.
The European Commission lists coordinated actions against nine additional companies, including King, Mojang, Riot Games, Supercell and Ubisoft. It describes suspected practices and dialogue with the companies. That is a confirmed enforcement process, not a finding that every named game has breached the law or a disclosure of penalties.
One purchase contains two price decisions
The CPC Network's March 2025 principles call for clear real-money prices for purchasable currencies and the digital content bought with them. They also address repeated currency conversions and bundles that force unwanted purchases. The relevant currencies can be bought with real money; gameplay-only rewards and cryptocurrencies are excluded from the document's scope.
Consider a hypothetical shop offering a cosmetic item for tokens while selling tokens only in packages. The player may understand the package's cash price yet still struggle to judge the item's full cost. A package larger than the desired purchase can leave an unused balance. The commercial question then shifts from whether the player wanted the item to how much cash had to leave the account to obtain it.
That balance can influence the next decision. A player might return to spend it, or buy another package to complete a later purchase. These are possible mechanisms, not measured behaviour across the nine companies. Establishing their significance would require transaction-level evidence about balances, repeat purchases and informed consent. The announcement provides no basis for assigning a revenue loss to any publisher.
Transparency is therefore more demanding than putting a cash figure next to the initial top-up. An item-level reference can make separate offers comparable and help a household relate virtual spending to its budget. It can also distinguish a genuine discount from an apparent bargain that depends on buying more purchasing power than the customer wanted.
Withdrawal creates another implementation question. The principles address unused purchased currency and the conditions under which immediate digital-content delivery can remove a withdrawal right. Those conditions include express consent and acknowledgement; they do not amount to a blanket exemption for every virtual balance. Refund handling and checkout consent are thus part of product design, not just language added to terms.
Existing law moves into individual game shops
The Commission says unresolved concerns can lead to enforcement by national authorities. The September 30 joint statement connects the coordinated approach to existing consumer law and cross-border games. It says earlier guidance and industry dialogue had not produced substantive changes at many companies. That is the authorities' assessment, not an independently quantified compliance rate.
The documents use different counts. The Commission webpage names nine new companies and describes earlier work involving Microsoft and Activision Blizzard separately. The joint statement refers to eleven coordinated actions and includes Activision Blizzard in its list. Actions, games and companies are different units; reading eleven as eleven newly targeted companies would overstate the webpage's announcement.
Guidance also needs to be distinguished from legislation. The principles explicitly say they do not bind national authorities or the Commission and that non-adherence is not automatically unlawful. Competent authorities and courts determine legality under the applicable rules. The September action therefore increases scrutiny without itself creating a universal new statute or establishing the outcome of an individual case.
The industry's September 30 response says its members have developed proposals on transparency, bundles, refunds and withdrawal, but disputes the legal classification of in-game currencies and asks for legal certainty. These are industry representations. Its objection invokes the distinction from cryptocurrency; the CPC document already expressly excludes cryptocurrencies, so that objection should not be used to suggest the authorities have classified every game token as bitcoin.
The substantive dispute is how existing consumer obligations attach to the separate steps in a game purchase. A company can argue that its initial top-up is clear while authorities question the later spending decision. Resolving that disagreement may require examining actual screens, bundle choices and consent flows rather than debating the label assigned to the token alone.
A clearer checkout could change the revenue mix
For a publisher, redesign could alter purchase conversion, the amount prepaid, unused balances and refund requests. Compliance work also consumes engineering and legal resources. These are exposure channels; their direction and scale cannot be inferred from the number of companies named. Differences between games, players and payment arrangements matter more than applying one haircut to the entire sector.
The strongest counterargument to a purely negative financial reading is that clear prices could preserve the virtual-currency model while increasing customer trust. Players who understand a purchase may be more willing to repeat it. Conversely, a system that relies materially on confusing comparisons or excess top-ups could face a more difficult adjustment. Both are conditional interpretations, not forecasts of revenue or profit.
Evidence from implemented changes would make the analysis more concrete: purchasing behaviour, refunds and retained customers before and after a redesign, with the comparison accounting for content releases and promotions. Published commitments or national decisions would clarify legal scope. Until such evidence exists, the useful distinction is between commercial value customers choose and revenue that depends on the path they must take to pay. The coordinated action puts that path under examination.