EU Gaming Investigation: 5 Lessons on Virtual Currency Pricing

The EU gaming investigation announced on 1 October 2026 is a warning shot for every company that sells digital goods through an in-app currency.

European consumer authorities are examining nine game publishers over how they price and present virtual currencies. If your product has gems, coins, credits or tokens, the questions regulators are asking apply to you too, whether you build games or not.

Who Is Being Investigated and Why

According to ProPakistani’s summary, the companies are Crytek, InnoGames, King.com Operations, Mojang, Plarium Europe, PLR Worldwide Sales, Riot Games, Supercell and Ubisoft EMEA. The games under review include Valorant, Minecraft, Candy Crush Saga, Clash of Clans, For Honor, Gardenscapes, Forge of Empires, Hunt: Showdown 1896 and Mech Arena.

Separately, the Consumer Protection Cooperation Network is working with Activision Blizzard UK over Diablo Immortal and Call of Duty Mobile.

The authorities are checking whether these games meet EU rules on transparent pricing. Can players see the real-world price of virtual currency? Is the pricing system deliberately confusing? Does the design push people to buy more currency than they need?

How We Got Here

This did not come out of nowhere. The CPC Network began talks with the gaming industry in 2025 about virtual currency compliance. Those talks did not produce enough change, so regulators moved to formal investigations and a wider market review.

Michael McGrath, the EU’s consumer protection chief, put it plainly: game companies must ensure players, particularly children, are not exposed to harmful or unfair practices. The official background on EU consumer rules is available on the European Commission’s consumer protection pages.

Notice the sequence. Dialogue first, enforcement second. That is a pattern across EU tech policy, and it is worth remembering when your own industry gets its first “voluntary” consultation.

Lesson 1: Show the Real Price

If a player buys a pack of 500 gems, they should be able to tell what that costs in euros, dollars or rupees. Pricing that hides the conversion behind several layers of currency is exactly what regulators dislike.

The fix is simple in design terms. Display the real money value next to the virtual price wherever a purchase decision happens. Product and UX teams can do this in a sprint.

Lesson 2: Do Not Design Awkward Bundles

You know the trick. An item costs 700 coins, but packs come in 500 and 1,000. The player has to buy the bigger pack and ends up with leftovers. Regulators are now looking at whether this kind of design pressures people into buying more than they need.

It may be profitable in the short term. It is also a clear target. Offer pack sizes that match actual prices, or let players buy exact amounts.

Lesson 3: Respect Withdrawal Rights

EU rules give consumers a 14-day withdrawal period for unused virtual currency. That means your refund flow, your support scripts and your backend data model must handle it.

Engineers should treat this as a real requirement. You need to track which currency was purchased, when, and whether it was spent. A refund feature bolted on late is expensive and buggy.

Lesson 4: Protect Children and Vulnerable Users

Special protections apply to children and vulnerable users, and the EU has said so loudly. Age-appropriate design, spending limits, parental controls and clear confirmation steps are no longer optional extras.

The wider legal landscape also matters. Privacy and data rules, including the GDPR, shape how you can profile players and personalise offers. Targeted pricing aimed at young users is the kind of thing that attracts attention from several regulators at once.

Lesson 5: Build Compliance Into the Product, Not the Legal Deck

Here is the thing: most compliance failures are product failures. The legal team writes a policy. The growth team ships a design that quietly breaks it. Nobody connects the two until a regulator does.

Put compliance checks into your release process. Add pricing transparency to design reviews. Keep an audit trail of experiments that touch purchase flows. Treat A/B tests on monetisation the same way you treat security changes, with review and sign-off.

What This Means Beyond Gaming

Any subscription app, marketplace or SaaS with credits and tokens should read this carefully. Digital wallets, AI credit systems and pay-per-use tools all share the same weakness: abstract currencies make real costs harder to see.

With AI products now selling “credits” for usage, expect similar scrutiny. A regulator who learns to read gem pricing can learn to read token pricing. Companies that fix transparency early will have an easier time later.

For teams outside Europe, the lesson still applies. Rules like these tend to spread. Selling to EU customers means complying with EU consumer law, and many other markets copy the approach.

A Quick Self-Audit for Product Teams

You do not need to wait for a letter from Brussels. Run a short internal review this month. Open your purchase flow on a phone and count the taps between seeing a price and confirming it. Check whether the real currency amount is visible at every step. Look at your pack sizes and ask whether any of them force leftovers.

Then review your data. Can you tell, for any account, how much virtual currency was bought and how much remains unused? If the answer is “not easily,” a refund request will be painful. Fix the data model first, because everything else depends on it.

Finally, look at your analytics events. Teams often track conversion beautifully and track refunds badly. Regulators care about both sides of that picture.

The Business Case for Getting This Right

Compliance is often framed as a cost. In this case it is also a trust play. Players who understand what they are paying for tend to stay longer and complain less. Chargebacks drop. Support tickets about “where did my money go” shrink.

There is also the simple risk calculation. Investigations take management time, legal fees and public attention. Fixing a pricing screen takes a few days of design and engineering. Most leaders will take that trade once they see it written down.

Key Takeaways

• Nine publishers under review: Riot Games, Ubisoft EMEA, Supercell, King, Mojang and others face scrutiny over virtual currency pricing.
• Transparency is the core test: Players must see real-world prices and clear terms before they buy.
• 14-day withdrawal rights: Unused virtual currency can be refunded, so systems must support it.
• Children get extra protection: Design and spending controls need to reflect that.
• Compliance is a product job: Build checks into design, testing and release, not just legal review.

How TecniForge Can Help

At TecniForge, we help businesses navigate these technology shifts. Whether you need custom software development, AI integration, or cloud migration, our team builds scalable solutions. We can help you design transparent purchase flows, refund logic and audit-friendly systems from the start. Talk to our experts.

If a regulator opened your checkout flow tomorrow, would the real price be obvious within five seconds?