Engagement mechanics and predatory monetisation in the age of the Digital Fairness Act

In March 2026, Euroconsumers and Football Supporters Europe filed a complaint with the European Commission against FIFA¹: opaque dynamic pricing for 2026 World Cup tickets, 50-dollar “bait tickets” almost impossible to find when sales opened, and a final ticket price seven times higher than in 2022. FIFA itself takes a commission on every resale, making it both judge and party in the price surge it is supposed to curb.

This case illustrates, in real time and on a continental scale, what the Commission is preparing to regulate with the Digital Fairness Act, a text that could redraw the rules of the game for sectors not necessarily expected in this field.

Starting with the video game industry.

I. What is being prepared in Brussels

Announced but not yet tabled, the Digital Fairness Act is a (yet another) text included in the European Commission’s 2026 work programme². It is based on a simple finding made in 2024: European consumer law is relevant but is still far from having achieved its objectives.

This shortfall has been quantified: unfair commercial practices are estimated to cost European consumers around 7.9 billion euros a year, compared with an estimated compliance cost of 737 million euros for businesses³.

The problems identified are well known: increased use of misleading or addictive interfaces, personalisation practices that exploit consumers’ vulnerabilities, difficulties in cancelling online subscriptions, and forced acceptance of unfair contract terms.

The text falls under the priority of “protecting our democracy, upholding our values”, with an indicative date set for the fourth quarter of 2026. The Digital Fairness Act aims to meet central priorities of the Commission: simplifying European digital law and protecting minors.

Technically, rather than creating a new standalone regulation (as with the DSA or the AI Act), the Commission could choose to make the DFA an amending directive that would make targeted changes to three European directives assessed as underperforming in 2024, which would thus serve as the basis for the objectives pursued by the Digital Fairness Act, leaving Member States more room in transposition:

• Directive 2005/29/EC⁴ (UCPD, “Unfair Commercial Practices Directive”), the current basis for penalising unfair commercial practices and dark patterns;
• Directive 2011/83/EU⁵ (CRD, “Consumer Rights Directive”), which governs mandatory pre-contractual information, the right of withdrawal and the rules applicable to distance contracts (online and in-game purchases);
• Directive 93/13/EEC⁶ (UCTD, “Unfair Contract Terms Directive”) on unfair terms in consumer contracts.

In France, a note from March 2026⁷ makes an express call for age verification on certain games. The idea would be to move from a self-regulatory declarative system to technical and binding age verification. The ground on which this note relied has, however, shifted since. The law passed on 21 July 2026⁸ to ban access to social networks for under-15s, intended to take over from a 2023 text (Law No. 2023-566⁹) that never came into force for lack of an implementing decree and of approval from the European Commission, was partially struck down by the French Constitutional Council on 14 August 2026¹⁰ on two grounds.

First, a disproportionate infringement of freedom of expression, resulting from the combination of a definition of “social network” too broad to distinguish services according to their real risks (§11-13). The Council notes that the exceptions do not cover “online games with marked collaborative and social features”, and points to the total absence of any mechanism allowing holders of parental authority to adjust the ban according to the minor’s age or maturity (§14-16).

Second, an infringement of the right to privacy: by failing to determine the conditions and limits of the proof of age required from all users, including adults, the legislature did not provide the necessary legal safeguards (§19-21).

Under French law, therefore, the boundary between a social network and a multiplayer game with a social component has still not been settled.

Behind the scenes, the video game industry is already preparing for a form of self-regulation through the overhaul of the PEGI rating system¹¹, recently revised and in force since June 2026, a sort of nutri-score for the consumer product that is the video game.

II. Early compliance with the Digital Fairness Act driven by the PEGI reform

Until now, the PEGI (Pan-European Game Information) rating relied almost exclusively on a game’s content (violence, language, sexuality) to determine from what age it could be played. The reform introduces new categories covering very contemporary monetisation and engagement mechanics, whose harmfulness is more than established.

The addition of these new categories echoes the practices that the European Parliament specifically asked to be covered by the Digital Fairness Act in its resolution of 26 November 2025¹². These criteria give an idea of what the future European text could make binding:

• In-app purchases limited in time or quantity (such as a paid battle pass): PEGI 12 rating. A game can drop back to PEGI 7 if it offers control tools that disable spending by default, which in practice do not exist, and this should therefore encourage the development of such tools.
• Paid random items (loot boxes, pack opening, gacha, keys to unlock random rewards): PEGI 16 rating by default. These are the online casino mechanics that regulators are trying to capture and regulate. This is why EA Sports FC 27, with its Ultimate Team mode, will carry a PEGI 16 rating¹³.
• “Appointment gaming” (daily quests, login streaks): PEGI 7 rating by default. These mechanics create particularly strong engagement among players (FOMO), with a possible rise to PEGI 12 if the mechanic is coupled with a paid battle pass encouraging logins, or if players lose content or status already acquired when they fail to return.
• Unmoderated online communication (a game offering no tools to restrict or moderate text or voice chat): PEGI 18 rating. Such a game could risk being banned from sale in jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom under the Online Safety Act. Titles such as Rust and DayZ, for example, rely on proximity voice chat open by default, with no filtering or native moderation built in by the publisher (unlike Embark Studios’ Arc Raiders, for example).

III. The limits of self-regulation: the Belgian lesson

Binding regulation of the monetisation techniques used by publishers is nothing new and has existed in Europe for nearly ten years.

As early as April 2018, the Belgian Gaming Commission (CJH) classified loot boxes as a form of gambling subject to gambling legislation¹⁴, after examining four titles: FIFA 18, Overwatch, CS GO and Star Wars Battlefront II. Three of them, FIFA 18, Overwatch and CS GO, were found to fall within the definition of gambling. The fourth, Star Wars Battlefront II, escaped it: shortly after launch, EA had changed the game’s progression system to remove the problematic pay-to-win aspect, which was enough to take its loot boxes outside the definition, without any authority having to intervene. The CJH ordered the publishers of the other three titles to comply or face fines or a sales ban¹⁵.

The contrast between the two outcomes is instructive. Battlefront II escaped classification thanks to public pressure and the publisher’s voluntary correction, before any intervention by the law. For the other three titles, the CJH’s formal notice did have an effect: Valve disabled case opening in CS GO for Belgian players, Blizzard removed paid loot boxes from Overwatch and EA stopped selling FIFA Points in Belgium in early 2019. But these withdrawals were voluntary compliance, without any penalty ever being imposed, and their scope remains limited: the mechanics were only disabled in Belgium, and a study published in 2023¹⁶ found that most of the highest-grossing mobile games still offered paid loot boxes there, for lack of effective enforcement. Legally, these mechanics therefore remain difficult to pin down.

The Belgian example is full of lessons, and gives the Digital Fairness Act a reason to exist: the scope of the remedy will depend directly on the legal form the Commission chooses, a choice that remains open at this stage.

An amending directive, making targeted changes to the UCPD, the CRD and the UCTD, would leave each country to set its own enforcement and penalty arrangements, with the risk of reproducing, across the Union, the pitfall already seen in Belgium: a framework that is strict in theory but uneven and easy to circumvent in practice, depending on the resources available to each national authority.

A standalone regulation, by contrast, would apply directly and uniformly in all twenty-seven Member States, with harmonised enforcement powers, which would precisely address the structural weakness illustrated by the Belgian case.

The choice of legal form is therefore not just a matter of legislative technique: it is what will determine whether the DFA repeats or corrects the limits already experienced in Belgium.

IV. Steps studios and publishers can already take

Even before anticipating the provisions of a text whose outlines are not yet clearly defined, the stakeholders concerned can adopt certain good practices to avoid any reputational risk or reclassification under the new PEGI rating system:

• Map existing monetisation mechanics against the four PEGI criteria. Although the reform has no retroactive effect, any update may trigger a new assessment, so an audit of the catalogue and of the mechanics already in place will not be a wasted exercise;
• Document parental control and spending cap tools. A studio able to develop and document these upstream has a real competitive advantage, both in terms of rating and potentially, tomorrow, under the Digital Fairness Act;
• Anticipate age verification, which is one of the most important European issues to consider today. The definition adopted in France by Article 1 of Law No. 2023-566 of 7 July 2023 establishing a digital age of majority and combating online hate strongly resembles the features offered by certain games and gaming platforms; complying with it now removes a real legal risk;
• Treat the moderation of in-game communications as a compliance issue and not just a community issue. This means individual muting features, in-game reporting and the ability to restrict chat by default for minors’ accounts, and including these aspects in product compliance reviews.

Notes

1. Euroconsumers, Euroconsumers and Football Supporters Europe file complaint to the European Commission against FIFA over 2026 World Cup ticket practices, 24 March 2026 ↩

2. European Parliament, Digital Fairness Act: Legislative Train Schedule, 20 June 2026 ↩

3. European Commission, Fitness check of EU Consumer law on digital fairness, 3 October 2024 ↩

4. EUR-Lex, Directive 2005/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2005 ↩

5. EUR-Lex, Directive 2011/83/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 October 2011 ↩

6. EUR-Lex, Council Directive 93/13/EEC of 5 April 1993 ↩

7. Conseil de l’IA et du numérique, « Protection des mineurs en ligne par le contrôle de l’âge : comment aller plus loin ? », March 2026 ↩

8. French Senate, bill to protect minors from the risks of using social networks, 21 July 2026 ↩

9. Légifrance, Law No. 2023-566 of 7 July 2023 establishing a digital age of majority and combating online hate, Official Journal of 8 July 2023 ↩

10. French Constitutional Council, Decision No. 2026-911 DC of 14 August 2026 ↩

11. PEGI, PEGI expands age rating criteria with interactive risk categories, 12 March 2026 ↩

12. European Parliament, Legislative Observatory (OEIL), Protection of minors online, procedure 2025/2060(INI), adopted on 26 November 2025 ↩

13. BBC, “EA FC gets a new age rating after loot box rule changes”, 24 July 2026 ↩

14. Kansspelcommissie, investigation report on loot boxes, April 2018 ↩

15. Koen Geens, « La Belgique considère que les loot boxes dans les jeux vidéo sont des jeux de hasard », 25 April 2018 ↩

16. L. Y. Xiao, “Breaking Ban: Belgium’s Ineffective Gambling Law Regulation of Video Game Loot Boxes”, Collabra: Psychology, vol. 9, no. 1, 2023 ↩

Maxime KUBIAKBusiness lawyer, intellectual property and digital law

https://lexludica.com/en/articles/predatory-monetisation-digital-fairness-act