The title is gross clickbait. The EU is not banning virtual currencies, but introducing informing publishers of regulations guidelines to ensure the user is informed of their real monetary value, and that deceptive or unfair pricing practices are avoided.
They’re not even introducing regualtions. These are non-binding guidelines, as far as I can tell. Basically a declaration of how the relevant EU protection services will interpret existing EU regulations. They explicitly don’t force courts or individual member states to do anything. You could follow these rules and get sued in your country… or you could ignore them and win in court.
This seems to be a set of non-binding guidelines for HOW to provide virtual currencies in games as per consumer protection agencies within the EU. Specifically that when something can be bought with purchasable currency it needs to show the money price next to the in-game-currency price and that currency packs should not be deliberately mismatched to in-game item prices to leave frustrating leftovers to encourage more purchases.
This article is just incorrect. Please seek better sources, like the direct link to the text someone more competent than this reporter provided.
This may not be as straightforward as planned. There are plenty of games that have virtual currencies you can gain in game. So short of giving you money they would still need some “wallet”. And that virtual wallet wouldn’t be able to match 1:1 the real wallet value
When in-game digital content or services are offered in exchange
for in-game virtual currency that can be bought (directly or indirectly via another
in-game virtual currency), their price should also be indicated in real-world money.
The price should be indicated based on what the consumer would have to pay in full,
directly or indirectly via another in-game virtual currency, the required amount of in-
game virtual currency, without applying quantity discounts or other promotional offers
Although consumers may acquire in-game virtual currency in different ways and
quantities, for example through gameplay or due to promotional offers, this does
not change the price of the in-game digital content or services itself. The price must
constitute an objective reference for what the real-world monetary cost is, regardless
of how the consumer acquires the means to purchase it.
I would argue this is a remarkable loophole, though. It effectively means they are ordering devs to display a higher price in real money than in virtual currency. Effectively a prompt that goes “this is normally ten bucks, but if you buy it this way you can get it for seven in virtual currency” would be following this recommendation to the letter.
Turns out regulating things this granularly is actually kinda hard. Go figure.
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Since the article fails to link it (and also reads like slop), here is the actual publication: https://commission.europa.eu/document/8af13e88-6540-436c-b137-9853e7fe866a_en
The title is gross clickbait. The EU is not banning virtual currencies, but
introducinginforming publishers ofregulationsguidelines to ensure the user is informed of their real monetary value, and that deceptive or unfair pricing practices are avoided.They’re not even introducing regualtions. These are non-binding guidelines, as far as I can tell. Basically a declaration of how the relevant EU protection services will interpret existing EU regulations. They explicitly don’t force courts or individual member states to do anything. You could follow these rules and get sued in your country… or you could ignore them and win in court.
Yeeeah, no, they did nothing of the sort.
This seems to be a set of non-binding guidelines for HOW to provide virtual currencies in games as per consumer protection agencies within the EU. Specifically that when something can be bought with purchasable currency it needs to show the money price next to the in-game-currency price and that currency packs should not be deliberately mismatched to in-game item prices to leave frustrating leftovers to encourage more purchases.
This article is just incorrect. Please seek better sources, like the direct link to the text someone more competent than this reporter provided.
Better late than never I guess.
Fantastic! Now do loot boxes and battle passes.
Sounds basically what gacha games in Asia already do with pull rate percentages, no? But with the monetary value of their ingame currencies.
This may not be as straightforward as planned. There are plenty of games that have virtual currencies you can gain in game. So short of giving you money they would still need some “wallet”. And that virtual wallet wouldn’t be able to match 1:1 the real wallet value
They do address that:
I would argue this is a remarkable loophole, though. It effectively means they are ordering devs to display a higher price in real money than in virtual currency. Effectively a prompt that goes “this is normally ten bucks, but if you buy it this way you can get it for seven in virtual currency” would be following this recommendation to the letter.
Turns out regulating things this granularly is actually kinda hard. Go figure.
Just have the store accept two currencies. “If you want this thing you can either pay 4.99€, or 156000 schmooplebucks”
What do they mean by “Virtual Currencies” ?