this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2026
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[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 44 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

Original article by PEGI: https://pegi.info/news/pegi-expands-age-rating-criteria-interactive-risk-categories

Purchases of in-game content: games with time-limited or quantity-limited offers will be classified with a PEGI 12, games with NFTs or blockchain-related mechanisms will be PEGI 18.

Paid random items: the default rating will be PEGI 16 if the game contains paid random items (and in some cases they can be a PEGI 18).

Play-by-appointment: mechanisms that reward returning to the game (e.g. daily quests) will get a PEGI 7. If these mechanisms punish players for not returning (e.g. by losing content or reducing progress) they will become PEGI 12.

Safe online gameplay: if games contain entirely unrestricted communication features (e.g. no blocking or reporting), they will be PEGI 18.

That wording sounds really unspecific. I wonder how the first two poins will be interpreted with regard to games where the paying for gambling tokens involves multiple steps of conversion. In particular, Genshin Impact and similar games, where the paid currency first has to be converted (at a 1:1 rate) to a general currency that can be earned by engaging with the completely free progression systems.

[–] kilgore_trout@feddit.it 1 points 12 hours ago

the default rating will be PEGI 16 if the game contains paid random items

So if Pokémon Pocket was released after this revision, would it be labelled PEGI 16?

[–] Feyd@programming.dev 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Play-by-appointment is the gateway to all the other anti features, and not being about to focus on studying because you're worried about your dailies shouldn't be something 12 year olds (or anyone, really) are exposed to

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

See, I have a real issue with the "12 year olds (or anyone, really)" bit there in juxtaposition to all the pushback on OS age verification.

The gaming community has spent the past decade and change doing the exact same moral panic routine that anti-game violence crusaders did in the 90s and are in the process of finding out why it's a bad idea.

Age ratings and content warnings? Awesome. Gating content and design concepts on moral grounds? Not that.

[–] Feyd@programming.dev 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You think that identifying dark patterns that are literally designed by psychologists to be as addictive as possible is moral panic?

[–] Sibbo@sopuli.xyz 20 points 1 day ago

Well, we will see what they do in practice. I think it's a step in te right direction.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It doesn't need to be too specific, in that PEGI actually reviews the products it rates. You get to send them a preview and then talk to them about the rating.

I also think some of the stuff Eurogamer is reporting is weird, or maybe PEGI is just not aware of some tools? For instance, null

A game will be able to reduce this PEGI rating to 7 if it contains in-game controls that allow you to turn spending off by default. As Bosmans noted, these systems don't really exist yet, but the hope is this change will incentivise them to be developed.

Is not actually true. Many games do include turning spending off based on the user's reported age or whether they're on a child account (Nintendo and Sony both support this as a feature, I believe).

So there is some confusing stuff going on here, but it all seems mostly reasonable to me.

[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

My trust in PEGI's ability to properly review games has decreased significantly after Balatro got a PEGI-18 rating for some real horseshit reasons. This is a good direction, my concern is with the execution.

[–] adoxographer@feddit.dk 1 points 6 hours ago

Isn’t the issue here that fifa fc should also be 18?

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 2 points 1 day ago

Myeh. I think they mostly do fine, but they're certainly not perfect. These are reasonable, but some of the stuff they're saying about it is factually incorrect, too (like I said, there ARE age-based commerce lockouts in games already despite their statements).

All they need to do to be functional is have a modicum of consistency and at least be reactive to feedback. The Balatro thing sucked, but they did correct it. Some of these changes seem to be specifically a reaction to the Balatro thing, in fact.