The EU wrote seven principles for in-game coins, not micro-dramas

The figure or the record

On 21 March 2025 the EU's Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) Network, coordinated with the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets and the Norwegian Consumer Authority in the lead, published Key Principles on In-game Virtual Currencies, seven non-binding principles for how a trader should sell a currency that stands in for real money inside a video game. The same day the network published a linked common position against Star Stable Entertainment AB, citing exhortation of children to buy currency and time-pressure selling tactics as the kind of practice the principles target.

What the documents establish

The principles define an in-game virtual currency as a digital representation of value purchased with real money and spent on digital content or services, and set out concrete practices to avoid: mixing several currencies in one product so the true cost is hard to work out, requiring several currency-to-currency exchanges before a purchase completes, and selling only bundles that mismatch the amount a player actually needs, forcing an unwanted top-up. A separate principle affirms a 14-day withdrawal right on unused purchased currency, and another treats children, and anyone showing problematic spending behaviour, as consumers deserving stricter scrutiny of game and paywall design, not just of advertising.

Scope and caveats

The document is explicitly about video games; a footnote excludes cryptocurrencies and currencies obtainable only through gameplay, but it does not extend its own scope to non-game apps. Whether a short-drama app's coin ladder, bundles bought with real money and spent per episode unlock, falls inside in-game virtual currency is an open question the principles do not answer themselves; the definition's emphasis on paying a price in exchange for the supply of in-game digital service or content describes the mechanic closely, but the document was written for, and enforced against, games specifically. The principles are also explicitly non-exhaustive and without prejudice to the underlying directives, so compliance with them is not itself a legal safe harbour, and non-compliance is not automatically unlawful; only the underlying consumer-protection directives and the competent courts decide that.

What to watch

Editorially, the detail worth tracking is whether the CPC Network opens a named action against a short-drama or micro-fiction app specifically, since that would settle by precedent what the principles' own text leaves open: whether in-game reaches a coin-and-episode app that is not, in the ordinary sense, a game.

• Does the app's coin denominations match the price of an unlock cleanly, or does it require an unused remainder, the exact practice Principle 3 flags?
• Does the app honour a 14-day withdrawal right on an unused coin balance, as Principle 5 sets out for virtual currency generally?
• Has any EU member state's consumer authority applied these principles, or the underlying directives, to a video app that is not a game?

The March 2025 principles are a real, dated, detailed European document, and their diagnosis of mismatched bundles and multi-currency confusion reads as though written with a coin-based drama app in mind, but the document itself was written for video games, and that gap between what it describes and what it covers is worth keeping honest.