EU Takes Action Against 9 Gaming Companies Over Virtual Currency Practices

European consumer authorities have opened coordinated action against nine gaming companies behind Valorant, Minecraft, Clash of Clans and other major titles, escalating a dispute over whether virtual currencies make it unnecessarily difficult for players to understand how much they are really spending.

Buying a skin in Valorant, an item in Minecraft or something inside a mobile game often involves an extra step that barely existed in gaming two decades ago. Instead of paying directly in dollars, euros or rupees, players first convert their money into a currency created by the game. European consumer regulators are now asking whether that extra layer has gone too far.

On September 30, the European Union’s Consumer Protection Cooperation Network, commonly known as the CPC Network, launched coordinated actions concerning nine gaming companies and their use of in-game virtual currencies. The network connects national consumer-protection authorities across the European Union and works with the European Commission to address potential breaches of EU consumer law that extend across national borders.

According to the European Commission, the authorities suspect commercial practices surrounding virtual currencies in the nine games may fail to comply with European consumer-protection requirements.

The list contains some of gaming’s biggest names. Riot Games is facing scrutiny over Valorant, Mojang over Minecraft, Supercell over Clash of Clans and King over Candy Crush Saga. Ubisoft’s For Honor, Crytek’s Hunt: Showdown 1896, InnoGames’ Forge of Empires, Plarium’s Mech Arena and Playrix-linked PLR Worldwide Sales’ Gardenscapes are also part of the coordinated action.

Why the EU is looking at gaming currencies

At the heart of the dispute is a deceptively simple question: when a player buys something inside a game, how easy is it to understand what that purchase actually costs? Virtual currencies have become deeply embedded in modern gaming. Valorant uses Valorant Points, Clash of Clans has Gems, and countless other games rely on their own coins, credits, tokens or similarly branded currencies.

Players generally purchase these currencies with real money and then spend them on skins, characters, upgrades or other digital content.

The system can create a disconnect between the price displayed on screen and the amount leaving a player’s bank account. An item priced at 1,200 fictional credits requires the player to remember, estimate or calculate what those credits represent in real money. Currency is also frequently sold in predetermined bundles, meaning someone may need to purchase more credits than the item itself requires.

That is precisely the kind of friction European regulators want to examine. The CPC Network argues that consumers should receive clear information about the real-world cost of digital products before purchasing them. Its position is that virtual currencies should not be structured in ways that obscure prices, make comparisons unnecessarily difficult or effectively require players to buy more currency than they need.

The September action is not the EU’s first move against the practice. In March 2025, the CPC Network published a set of Key Principles on In-Game Virtual Currencies intended to explain how existing European consumer law should apply to the increasingly complicated economies operating inside games. Those principles called for prices to be presented clearly and transparently, while warning companies against practices that could hide the true cost of digital content. Regulators also said consumers should not be forced into purchasing unnecessary quantities of virtual currency simply because the amount they need is unavailable as a standalone purchase.

The framework goes further than pricing. European authorities want companies to provide understandable terms and pre-contractual information, respect applicable withdrawal rights and exercise particular care when games are marketed to children or other vulnerable consumers. Regulators subsequently entered discussions with the games industry about those expectations. According to the Commission, however, a “high number” of companies made no substantive changes to their practices following the publication of the principles.

The September 30 actions represent the next stage of that process. Rather than addressing virtual currencies only at an industry-wide level, authorities are now raising concerns directly with individual companies.

Why children have become central to the argument

European regulators are particularly concerned about what complicated purchasing systems mean for younger players. A fictional currency can make spending feel psychologically removed from the real money used to acquire it, while countdowns, limited-time offers and other purchasing prompts can add pressure to transactions. The CPC Network had already tested some of these principles through its action involving Star Stable Online in March 2025.

Authorities raised concerns about advertising that directly appealed to children, pressure created through time-limited purchasing practices and insufficiently clear information surrounding the game’s virtual currency.

That case provided an early indication that Europe’s scrutiny would not stop at exchange rates. Regulators are interested in the entire purchasing environment surrounding digital goods, how an offer is presented, who is being encouraged to buy it, whether urgency is being manufactured and whether the consumer can readily understand the financial consequences.

The gaming industry disagrees with a crucial part of the EU’s argument

Publishers and developers are not simply accepting the regulators’ interpretation. Two of Europe’s principal games-industry trade organisations, Video Games Europe and the European Games Developer Federation (EGDF), responded to the September action by challenging how regulators are characterizing in-game currencies.

Video Games Europe represents major publishers and national games-industry associations across the continent, while the EGDF represents game-development studios through European national trade associations. Together, they provide the industry’s institutional counterweight to the consumer authorities pursuing the current action.

According to MobileGamer.biz, the groups dispute the CPC Network’s interpretation of in-game currencies as “digital representations of value.” Their argument is important because virtual currencies inside games generally operate within closed ecosystems rather than functioning like conventional money or freely transferable cryptocurrencies.

The industry groups say they have sought legal clarity on this interpretation since 2025. The disagreement therefore reaches beyond whether a Valorant skin should display a euro price next to its Valorant Points price. At stake is the regulatory framework that could govern virtual economies across thousands of games operating in Europe.

The industry is offering changes of its own

The industry’s resistance does not mean it is rejecting every consumer-protection concern raised by regulators. Video Games Europe and the EGDF have instead proposed their own set of commitments that could substantially change how players encounter virtual currencies.

One of the most significant proposals concerns the very issue at the centre of the EU action, understanding prices. The industry says games could show the corresponding real-money value alongside virtual-currency prices, allowing a player to see the monetary cost of an item without having to calculate an exchange rate independently. The trade groups have also proposed a 48-hour refund mechanism for wholly unused virtual-currency bundles. Under such a system, someone who purchased a bundle and subsequently changed their mind could recover the money provided none of the currency had been spent.

Another proposal concerns the permanence of digital purchases. Companies could provide at least 30 days’ notice before removing content that consumers had purchased, giving players greater visibility when paid digital items or services are approaching withdrawal.

Children feature prominently in the industry’s response as well. The proposed measures include stronger parental controls and remedies for unauthorized purchases made by minors, areas where regulators and industry representatives appear to share at least some common ground even if they disagree over the underlying legal treatment of virtual currencies. There is an important qualification, however. The trade bodies have linked those commitments to obtaining greater legal certainty over the CPC Network’s interpretation. As a result, the dispute is developing on two levels at once: regulators want purchasing systems changed, while the industry wants greater clarity over the legal principles being used to demand those changes.

Activision Blizzard is facing a separate EU action

Activision Blizzard also appears in the wider European crackdown on gaming monetization, but it should not be counted among the nine companies targeted in the September 30 announcement. The CPC Network opened a separate coordinated action involving Microsoft and Activision Blizzard earlier in 2026 concerning Call of Duty Mobile and Diablo Immortal. That investigation has a considerably wider scope than the latest virtual-currency actions.

European authorities are examining issues including potentially addictive design, default parental-control settings, collection of consumer data, direct appeals to children, pre-contractual information and unilateral account blocking. Virtual-currency practices are therefore only one component of that case. The Commission says dialogue concerning the Activision Blizzard action remains ongoing.

What happens to Riot, Mojang and the other companies now?

The opening of a coordinated action is not a finding that Riot Games, Mojang, Supercell or any of the other companies have already broken EU law. That distinction matters.

The companies will now have an opportunity to respond to the concerns raised by the CPC Network and engage with authorities over possible changes to their practices. The objective at this stage is to establish whether the identified concerns can be addressed through commitments or modifications to the way virtual currencies and purchases operate. If that dialogue fails to resolve the issues, national consumer-protection authorities can move towards enforcement using the powers available to them under European and domestic law.

That makes the distinction between the European Commission and the CPC Network important. The Commission coordinates the process, while the network itself brings together the national authorities responsible for enforcing consumer-protection law across EU member states.

The bigger question is what happens to virtual currencies themselves

The importance of the September action extends well beyond the nine games named by regulators. Virtual currencies have become one of the fundamental commercial building blocks of free-to-play games, live-service titles and increasingly even premium releases.

For publishers, these currencies offer a convenient economy that can work across hundreds of individual items while supporting bonuses, bundles and promotional pricing. For regulators, many of those same characteristics can make it harder for consumers to maintain an intuitive understanding of how much they are spending. The disagreement therefore does not necessarily concern whether virtual currencies should exist at all. The more immediate battle is over how transparent those systems must become when real money enters the equation.

Notably, several enormous games with their own currency-driven economies — including Fortnite, Roblox and EA Sports FC — are not among the titles named in the September 30 action. Their absence should not be interpreted as regulatory approval of their monetization systems. The Commission has not presented the nine cases as an exhaustive assessment of every virtual currency used in gaming.

That is what makes the current action considerably more important than a dispute over the price of a Minecraft item or a Valorant skin. Europe is beginning to establish how decades-old consumer rights apply to economies that exist entirely inside video games. If regulators succeed in forcing clearer real-money pricing, easier refunds and stronger protections for younger players, the effects could eventually reach far beyond the companies currently under scrutiny. If the industry successfully challenges the CPC Network’s interpretation, meanwhile, Europe may have to refine the legal framework before demanding broader changes.

Either way, the familiar layer of gems, coins, points and credits separating a player from the real price of an in-game purchase is receiving scrutiny at a scale the games industry can no longer easily dismiss.