PEGI Finally Cracks Down on EA Sports FC and Pokémon Go for Gambling Mechanics
It's a good start and hopefully gets these companies to change their tactics.
It has taken years, but games built around selling randomized rewards to children are finally starting to get age ratings that reflect what’s actually inside them.
PEGI has begun retroactively raising the age ratings of existing digital games containing paid random items to PEGI 16, with EA Sports FC Mobile and Pokémon Go among the titles affected.
The change follows new rules introduced in June that automatically give games containing paid loot boxes, card packs, gacha pulls, or similar random rewards a PEGI 16 rating by default. Until now, however, older games could continue displaying ratings as low as PEGI 3 despite using exactly the same monetization systems.
That loophole is now being closed throughout October.
EA Sports FC is perhaps the most obvious example of why this was overdue. Ultimate Team has spent years selling a pay-to-win model that’s basically gambling for better players for a clear competitive advantage. For reference, the FC/FUT pack industry brings in billions for EA every year.
EA reported a record $5.38 billion to $5.63 billion in live-service net bookings for Fiscal Year 2026. Microtransactions from Ultimate Team packs remain the undisputed heavyweight engine of this revenue, accounting for roughly half of EA’s entire extra-content ecosystem
The series was nevertheless marketed with a PEGI 3 rating for years. EA Sports FC 27 finally launched with a PEGI 16 rating last month because of its loot boxes.
Pokémon Go is slightly sneakier about it but they’ve also caught PEGI’s attention.
Players obtain Eggs through gameplay, but hatching them requires Incubators. The Pokémon inside is randomized, additional Incubators can be purchased with PokéCoins, and players can only hold a limited number of Eggs at once. This Egg-and-Incubator system is basically a loot box mechanic, turning the Incubator into the paid key used to open a randomized reward.
That’s before getting into the limited-time events, rotating Pokémon, premium raid passes and other systems constantly promoting FOMO to make players spend money.
Calling all loot boxes legally equivalent to gambling is still complicated for legal reasons, as courts haven’t always agreed. But asking children to repeatedly spend money for randomized rewards while using scarcity, fear-of-missing-out, and pay-to-win advantages to keep them coming back and spending money has always been predatory enough without needing a roulette wheel on screen.
PEGI has apparently decided a PEGI 3 badge no longer makes much sense either. PEGI Policy Manager provided a statement on the changes coming in October.
“We recognise that a high volume of rating changes will take place over a relatively short period. Publishers and developers with any questions, queries or concerns regarding the process should contact the PEGI Helpdesk for further guidance.”
