PEGI Starts Moving Loot Box Games Like EA Sports FC and Zenless Zone Zero Up to a 16 Rating Across Europe

By CriticalPixel · 2026-10-20

PEGI has started stamping a 16 on digital games that sell paid random items, and the first big name caught in the net is EA Sports FC, a football series that sat at PEGI 3 while selling card packs to anyone with a payment method. Eurogamer reports that the rollout began this month and will keep running through October. Games currently rated 3, 7 or 12 that include loot boxes are being moved up to 16, with a label that spells out the reason: paid random items. This is the first time a pile of existing games will see their age rating change because of how they make money, not because of what happens on screen. Some storefront pages already show the new number, and more will follow over the coming weeks.

EA Sports FC 27 official screenshot from the Steam store page

What PEGI Actually Changed

The announcement came from Connor Hinde, policy manager at the Games Rating Authority, the UK administrator of PEGI, in a LinkedIn post. Since June, newly submitted games have been assessed against an expanded set of criteria that includes interactive risks, and the GRA has now begun applying those criteria to selected existing digital products. Existing digital-only games rated PEGI 3, 7 or 12 that feature paid random items will have their rating updated to 16. As GamesIndustry.biz reports, the change applies whether a game was rated through PEGI's Classic procedure or through the International Age Rating Coalition system. The GRA also admitted that a high volume of rating changes will land in a short window, and it told publishers with questions to contact the PEGI Helpdesk. That is polite wording for publishers about to have an awkward month.

Who Gets Hit First

EA Sports FC is the headline name, since Eurogamer says the series previously carried PEGI 3. HoYoVerse's gacha action game Zenless Zone Zero has also jumped from 12 to 16 under the new rules. PocketGamer.biz found that Pokémon TCG Pocket now shows PEGI 16 on the Play Store in the UK, as does DeNA's 2019 title Pokémon Masters EX, and Nintendo's Fire Emblem Heroes has climbed from PEGI 12 to 16. The odd part is that those last two do not sell item-based loot boxes at all. They monetize through character gacha, which tells you PEGI is reading paid randomness broadly, not just crates that spit out cosmetics. Eurogamer also points at Monopoly Go, which still appears as 9+ on the Apple games store even though it sells randomized sticker packs and boxes, so expect that one to move.

EA Sports FC 27 second official screenshot from the Steam store page

The EA Sports FC Problem

EA Sports FC 27 is listed on Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, and the Steam page even sells FC Points as a separate item. The series is built around a card pack mode, so the idea that a football game with a pack economy deserves the same rating as a kids' sticker book never held up. For years the argument from the industry was that football is football and the shop is a side feature. A game that funnels players toward randomized purchases is not a side feature, it is the business model, and PEGI 3 on the box told parents the opposite. A 16 on the listing at least puts the monetization on the same page as the age number.

Why This Took So Long, and Why the US Is Not Following

PEGI announced in March that it would tackle loot boxes, addictive mechanics and unmonitored online communication, and it began weighing paid random items, time-limited purchases and quantity-limited offers for new releases in June. The history makes the reversal look sharper. PocketGamer.biz recalls that GRA director general Ian Rice spoke at PGC London in 2024 about the danger of factoring loot boxes into age ratings, saying the authority did not want that to be an influential factor. Its own Mobile Maven column put the current mood bluntly: industry self-regulation failed, repeatedly. Across the Atlantic, GamesIndustry.biz notes the ESRB said in March it would not adopt the PEGI changes in the US because they could be confusing for users, so a game can wear a 16 in Europe and a far milder rating at home.

EA Sports FC 27 third official screenshot from the Steam store page

What a 16 Does and Does Not Do

Eurogamer stresses that the ruling covers digital-only games and that it is largely up to parents to monitor what their children play. A label does not block a purchase by itself. What matters is how storefronts and console parental controls treat a PEGI 16 game, and none of the outlets covering the rollout say yet how Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Valve, Apple or Google will handle the new tag beyond updating listings. If the platforms filter by age rating, a 16 can keep these games out of a child's account. If they do not, this is a sticker on the box and nothing more. Publishers also have a cleaner option: strip the random purchases from a game and keep the lower rating, which would be a better outcome than any label.

Community Reaction

Replies under Eurogamer's post lean supportive, though the sample is small and I only read a handful. One reply called a slot machine with a soccer jersey on it never a kids' game and said it took them long enough, another said it was about time, a third hoped it would make publishers change things, and a fourth wanted gacha games included, which PocketGamer.biz's reporting says already looks to be the case. Reaction beyond that handful is limited, so there is no consensus to report. The only pushback I can point to is a quieter one: publishers have not commented on the changes, and EA has not said anything about the FC series that I could find.

The CriticalPixel Take

This is overdue and it is still the right call. A loot box does not care whether the game around it is a shooter, a football sim or a Pokémon card app, because the mechanic is the same: pay, hope, repeat. Rating a game by its violence while ignoring a system designed to part a teenager from their pocket money was always a strange priority, and PEGI has finally fixed the ordering. The weak spot is enforcement. A rating only means something when parents see it and platforms act on it, and PEGI has no power over what an American teenager sees on a store page. Still, EA Sports FC going from 3 to 16 is the kind of headline that makes a publisher's legal team read a monetization spreadsheet twice, and that alone is worth the paperwork.

Watch the next two weeks. The rollout runs through October, so the list of re-rated games will keep growing, and every new name will be a quiet admission of how many mainstream titles lean on randomized purchases. If Monopoly Go and the big football and basketball series all end up at 16, the debate moves from whether loot boxes count to why they were ever allowed to hide behind a PEGI 3.