Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions she has had with the Games Rating Authority on their proposals for monitoring compliance with the minimum age requirement for games featuring loot boxes.

The government engages with the Games Rating Authority (GRA), who are designated to ensure all games are appropriately rated using the Pan European Games Information (PEGI) age ratings. These ratings provide clear and detailed information on the content that can be found in a game such as violence, bad language, or the presence of paid random items (i.e. loot boxes).

In partnership with the GRA and other European regulators, PEGI has recently reviewed how their age ratings can better protect young players. As a result, four new risk categories have been developed, one of which directly addresses loot boxes, setting a minimum age rating of 16 for games which contain them.

The government supports the GRA’s strict enforcement of these new PEGI ratings, which come into force in June 2026. We will closely follow the implementation and expect that the new ratings will provide players, parents and video game developers with clear information on how loot boxes can be used in an age-appropriate way.