Starting in June 2026, newly submitted games will be classified with a broader set of criteria that will focus on content and functionality, such as purchases of in-game content, paid random items, communication features, and features that incentivise players to continue playing. With this additional set of criteria, PEGI can assess to what extent the presence of such elements in a game requires a higher PEGI age rating. This substantive change for the PEGI age rating system will help bolster online safety and meet the concerns and questions of today’s parents. 

During the development of these criteria, PEGI not only worked with its internal committees of experts, but also cooperated closely with the German age rating authority USK (Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle), which implemented similar changes in 2023 following an update of the German Youth Protection Act. 

“It was incredibly useful to learn from the experiences of our colleagues in Germany”, says Dirk Bosmans, Director of PEGI. “We are confident that these ambitious updates to PEGI's classification criteria will provide parents and players with more useful and transparent advice that better reflects the overall experience that players can expect from the video games they play.”

“We are happy to find ourselves once again aligned with PEGI in addressing online interaction risks as soon as these changes are coming into effect”, says Elisabeth Secker, Managing Director of USK. “For us, it has been a useful and successful change: at least one of the new USK criteria has been applied to approximately 30% of all games that were submitted since we updated our system. Around 1 in 3 of those games have been given a higher age rating as a result. The effect of the changes was visible and impactful.”

PEGI already informs parents today about the presence of some of these features in video games, like in-game purchases and paid random items, but from now on they will be tied to specific age 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.

Publishers will be required to submit additional information if the newly introduced features are present in a video game, which will allow the PEGI Administrators to carefully examine how these features may affect the age classification of the game in question. Games can be submitted to PEGI for examination in advance of their announcement and their release, therefore PEGI expects that the first games classified under these new criteria will be announced later in summer of this year.

PEGI and its administrators have been working with a broad group of stakeholders and experts to define the boundaries of these new criteria. Helping parents make informed decisions by providing clear warnings was key in the determination process, as was the existence of other protective measures like parental tools. These tools are available on all video game platforms that make use of PEGI ratings, allowing parents to limit or block features like spending in games, online interaction, and the amount of playtime. Some publishers are also providing parents with similar features in individual games, improving the toolset that they can use to ensure a safe gameplay experience.

“With the updated set of age rating criteria, PEGI aims to make parents aware that certain features in games should be carefully assessed, and that parental tools can be a very helpful assistant when doing that”, says Beate Våje, chair of the PEGI Council.

“PEGI has laid a solid foundation to continue educating parents for many more years, since parents will need a stable source of information about a constantly changing environment like the video games market”, says Jeroen Jansz, chair of the PEGI Experts Group. “PEGI will continue to monitor relevant developments, and we will keep assessing the implementation of these criteria in the course of the next year, in the same way that we maintain a continuous review of the content classification categories.”