All Games With Loot Boxes in Europe to be Rated PEGI 16 at Minimum - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 12 March 2026 / 2,691 Views
The Pan European Game Information (PEGI) board has updated its age rating criteria.
Video games that have "paid random items," also known as loot boxes, will have a default rating of PEGI 16 and in some cases they can be PEGI 18.
Games with time-limited or quantity-limited paid content will be given a minimum rating of PEGI 12, while games with NFTs or blockchain-related mechanisms will be rated PEGI 18.
If a game has mechanisms that reward returning to the game like daily quests will get a minimum rating of PEGI7. If it punishes players for not returning they will be rated at least PEGI 12. Any game that has unrestricted communication features like no ability to block or report, they will be rated PEGI 18.
This will affect some long running video game series like EA Sports FC. The franchise has been rated PEGI 3, however, with the new age rating criteria the next entry will be given a rating of PEGI 16.
"It was incredibly useful to learn from the experiences of our colleagues in Germany," said PEGI Director Dirk Bosmans. "We are confident that these ambitious updates to PEGI's classification criteria will provide parents and players with more useful and transparent advice that better reflects the overall experience that players can expect from the video games they play."
USK Managing Director Elisabeth Secker added, "We are happy to find ourselves once again aligned with PEGI in addressing online interaction risks as soon as these changes are coming into effect. For us, it has been a useful and successful change: at least one of the new USK criteria has been applied to approximately 30% of all games that were submitted since we updated our system. Around 1 in 3 of those games have been given a higher age rating as a result. The effect of the changes was visible and impactful."
PEGI Council chair Beate Våje stated, "With the updated set of age rating criteria, PEGI aims to make parents aware that certain features in games should be carefully assessed, and that parental tools can be a very helpful assistant when doing that."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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It's the bare minimum, but it's a move in the right direction.
Make them illegal.
Should probably be PEGI 18 to bring them in line with actual gambling, but this is a great step anyway. That said, I hope 'paid' means paid with real money, not in-game money (and I mean purely in-game money, i.e. in-game money you can't in any way advance getting with real money). I would hope what e.g. Astro Bot does to not be considered PEGI 16-worthy after this.
Should actually be rated 18, it's gambling.
Love the idea of seeing FIFA ads and it say "PEGI 16" before it but it needs pushing to 18 until EA and others get the hint and parents understand.
