EU Cracks Down on In-Game Virtual Currencies, Excludes Crypto Tokens

The carve-out matters more than the crackdown itself: regulators are drawing a line between closed-loop in-game currencies and crypto tokens, effectively treating the latter as a separate asset class rather than a consumer-protection problem. That distinction cuts both ways for crypto gaming projects — it avoids near-term compliance friction, but also leaves them without the legal clarity the new guidelines give traditional game publishers. Whether this exclusion holds as the EU's broader digital-asset rules mature is the open question.