Gaming · Monday, 21 September 2026

01 Briefing what happened

Europe's draft child-safety law covers online games, and its wording reaches a single-player game you bought on Steam

The European Commission wants game shops to check a buyer's age before a download. The draft's own definition of an online game leaves out only games sold on a disc with no online part at all.

the age below which a child could not open a social media account

13- and 14-year-olds could have a parent-opened account capped at about an hour a day [5][3]

of a company's worldwide sales, the largest fine

it would be enforced through the Digital Services Act, the EU law that already handles adult-site age checks [7]

45m

monthly users in the EU above which a platform must file a safety plan

the plan has to be filed before the service comes into contact with children [3]

countries already testing the EU's age-check app

Cyprus, Denmark, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy and Spain, with EU-wide use planned by the end of 2026 [7]

The lead story — what happened

The European Commission proposed a law called the EU KIDS Act on 17 September, after Ursula von der Leyen, who heads the Commission, announced it in her annual speech the day before. [5][4]
Its headline rule bars children under 13 from opening a social media account. 13- and 14-year-olds could have a parent-opened account with limited contacts and strict time limits, and 15-year-olds their own. [5][3]
Online games are covered too, by separate rules. Game platforms would have to check a child's age before they can download a game. [4]
The draft's own text calls an online game any game played on a computer, a mobile device or a console, whether the software runs on the machine or on a server, free or paid. [2]
The only games left out are ones you can buy and reach exclusively on a disc or cartridge, with no online part at all. [2]
Paul Diegel, a policy adviser to the European Parliament member Marketa Gregorova, said that wording reaches single-player games, because they connect to Steam for updates. [2]
For games the draft says makers must not encourage children to play too much. Andreas Lober, a lawyer who advises games companies, reads that as often ruling out daily login bonuses and benefits you lose by not playing. [1]
Games would also have to limit contact between children and other players, and fit parental controls and age checks, though less strictly than social networks. [1]
The rule on showing the real money value of in-game currencies and loot boxes appears only in the draft's explanatory opening for games, not in the binding text, which limits it to social networks and video sites. [1]
Breaking the rules would be enforced under the EU's Digital Services Act, where fines reach 6% of a company's worldwide sales. [7][6]
Age would be proved through a Commission-built phone app that returns only a yes or no, keeps no identity documents, and holds no central record of who was checked. [7]
Age checks are already reaching games without this law: PlayStation began checking ages in the UK and Ireland in April, and Australia's rules mean Steam takes only an Australian credit card as proof for adult games. [9]
None of it is law. The European Parliament and the 27 member governments have to agree a final text, which could take months or years. [1][6]

1Under 3: no access to these services at all3 yrs
23 to 12: an account a parent fully controls, child-friendly services only12 yrs
313 and 14: a parent opens a limited account, up to an hour a day14 yrs
415 and over: your own account15 yrs

The age steps in the European Commission's draft. The figures are the ones in the proposal; they can change before anything becomes law.

Who is involved

Ursula von der Leyen

she heads the European Commission, which drafts the European Union's laws; she announced the plan in her annual State of the Union speech [5]
Paul Diegel

a senior policy adviser to Marketa Gregorova, a member of the European Parliament; he said single-player games are caught by the current wording [2]
Andreas Lober

a lawyer at the firm ADVANT Beiten who advises games companies on child-protection rules; he wrote the first legal read of the draft [1]
Valve

the American company that runs Steam, the largest shop for PC games; a game that uses it only for patches would still count as online [2]
The European Parliament and the 27 member governments

they have to agree a final text before any of this binds anyone [1]

How it unfolded

Dec 2025 Australia's ban on social media for under-16s takes effect, the first of its kind [8]
Apr 2026 the Commission presents its age-verification app [7]
Wed 16 Sep von der Leyen announces the plan in her State of the Union speech [5]
Thu 17 Sep the draft text is published, and lawyers reading it find games inside [1]
Next the Parliament and member governments negotiate the wording [1]

Where this points

Watch the definition of an online game in the next draft. If the clause covering any game that can be bought or reached online survives, every game sold on Steam in Europe is inside the law.

What is pushing on the whole day

The bar and the word are our reading of how hard each one is pushing today. The arrow is where it is heading. The evidence is in the stories below.

Memory chips costing more High↑

Valve said its new headset came out dearer than planned because of the global memory and storage markets. [14] Sony has still not set a date for the PlayStation 6, and both it and Xbox have weighed delaying to hold prices down. [15] The cheapest built gaming PC with a mid-range Nvidia card that PC Gamer could find this week was $1,399. [17]

Money for games getting tighter High→

Heart Machine, the studio behind Hyper Light Drifter, laid off almost everyone after a publishing deal collapsed. [10] Rebel Wolves built The Blood of Dawnwalker on about $40 million from the Chinese firm NetEase, while games it sits beside are reported at over $200 million. [23] India's first PC and console publisher raised $1 million to fund other studios' work. [25]

Games judged by who is still playing Building↑

Marvel Tokon's 24-hour peak on Steam fell from almost 25,000 at launch to 994. [11] Aniimo, a new creature-collecting game, passed 166,000 people playing at once. [20] FromSoftware stopped adding to Elden Ring Nightreign, and modders are still shipping new maps for it. [26]

The rest of the day

16 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
Hyper Light Drifter's studio nearly gone

Heart Machine, the American studio behind the 2016 action game Hyper Light Drifter, laid off nearly all its staff after a publishing deal collapsed. Studio head Alx Preston wrote on LinkedIn that without that income, and with no other funds within reach, almost everyone had to go. It is the fourth round of cuts in under three years, after one in November 2024 and two in October 2025. Preston said he does not yet know what is next for the studio, and asked anyone hiring to get in touch. [10]

Why it matters — A publishing deal is the wage bill for a studio whose game is not out yet, so these people lost their jobs over a contract none of them signed. Thirteen Heart Machine staff had won voluntary union recognition from the company earlier this year. [10]
03
A Marvel fighting game empties out

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, made by Japan's Arc System Works and published by Sony, came out six weeks ago to good notices, scoring 85 on Metacritic. On Steam it went differently. PC players hit performance problems at launch, the Steam rating sits at 49% positive, and on 18 September the 24-hour peak fell below 1,000 players for the first time, down from almost 25,000. The research firm Alinea estimates 740,000 copies sold across all machines. The developers have apologised to PC players and are shipping stability updates. [11]

24-hour peak at launch25,000 players
24-hour peak on 18 September994 players
Marvel Tokon's busiest hour on Steam, at launch and six weeks later.

Why it matters — A fighting game needs somebody to fight. Under a thousand players spread across the world is a long wait for a match, so anyone who bought it on PC now owns a game that needs a crowd it does not have. [11]
04
Sony will not name a PlayStation 6 date

Sony's chief executive Hiroki Totoki told the Wall Street Journal that the company has not settled on a release date for the PlayStation 6. The PlayStation 5 came out in 2020 and analysts had expected a successor around 2027. Both Sony and Microsoft have said they considered delaying their next consoles because memory chips have become expensive and scarce. Buyers would carry that on day one. A PlayStation 5 sells for about $650 today and the Pro model for about $750. [15]

Why it matters — A console is sold cheap and earned back on games, so launching into a chip shortage is the worst possible timing. Sony is choosing a later machine over a dearer one, and buyers wait either way. [15]
05
Valve says its next handheld is safe

Valve priced its Steam Frame virtual-reality headset at $1,059, above what it had planned. Developer Jeremy Selan told the BBC the company set out to make something far more affordable, and that the global memory and storage markets hit it the way they have hit everybody. Asked whether the same shortage changes plans for a second Steam Deck handheld, developer Pierre-Loup Griffais said not really. Valve has not said whether it sells the Frame at cost, as it does its Steam Machine living-room PC. [14][13]

Why it matters — Memory and storage are a large share of what any games machine costs to build, and AI data centres are buying the same chips. Every console maker is now picking between a higher price and a later machine. [14][15]
06
Memory maker looks at US factories

SK hynix is one of the world's two biggest makers of memory chips. Reuters reported on 16 September that the South Korean firm is in talks with Intel about making memory in the United States for the first time, citing three people familiar with the discussions. The options are leasing part of Intel's planned Ohio plant or forming a joint venture, possibly alongside the cloud computing firms buying most of the world's memory. SK hynix already packages chips in the US but does not make them there. [16]

Why it matters — Nothing here changes a price this year, because a chip plant takes years to build. It matters because the shortage pushing up console and PC prices is now being treated as permanent enough to build factories for. [16][18]
07
A mid-range gaming PC now costs $1,399

PC Gamer, which checks built gaming PC deals every week, says the cheapest machine it could find with Nvidia's mid-range RTX 5070 graphics card is $1,399, and that one uses a repurposed laptop processor. A version with a proper desktop chip is $1,600. The site's own build guides now open by naming memory and solid-state drive prices as the reason. In its own reader poll, 56% said they would pay over $600 for their next graphics card alone. [17][19][18]

Why it matters — This is where the chip shortage reaches an ordinary household. Not as a story about data centres, but as a machine that costs several hundred dollars more than the same machine did last year. [17][18]
08
A new creature game hits 166,000 players

Aniimo, an open-world game about collecting creatures, passed 166,000 people playing at once on Steam within days of release, according to the tracking site SteamDB. That put it ahead of Rust, Delta Force and Slay the Spire 2, with only eight games busier. It is openly built in the shape of Pokemon, Nintendo's creature series, which almost never appears on PC. Its Steam rating is Mostly Positive: favourable reviews praise the resemblance, and critical ones object to how it sells things inside the game. [20]

Why it matters — Pokemon's absence from PC is a Nintendo business decision, and it keeps leaving room for other studios. Palworld did the same thing in 2024 and has now been passed. [20]
09
Team colours sort Wardogs players

Wardogs is a shooter from the British studio Bulkhead in which up to 100 players split across three teams, and you pick your colour as you join. Polygon reports that within days a reputation attached to each colour. Blue is seen as the newcomers' team, so blue almost never wins and some matches do not start at all because nobody will join it. Red is seen as the aggressive team, topping the scoreboard while losing on the objective. Bulkhead knows 100 does not divide into three and says it does not mind. [21]

Why it matters — Nothing in the game assigns these meanings. Players built them in under a week, and a studio that lets people choose a side has handed away part of how its own matches balance. [21]
10
Headset reservations resold on eBay

Valve opened a waiting list for the Steam Frame and began emailing people to say whether they had a place or were still queuing. Resellers listed their places on eBay almost immediately. Valve charges $1,059 for the 256GB headset and $1,299 for the 1TB version; the eBay listings start at $1,700 and reach about $2,000. What is being sold is not a headset but the right to buy one. Some buyers are reporting the listings. [12][30]

Valve's price, 256GB headset1,059 dollars
Cheapest eBay listing for a place in the queue1,700 dollars
What Valve asks for the headset, and what a reseller asks for the right to buy one.

Why it matters — Valve's own developer said the company fought hard to hold the price at $1,059. A reseller has added $641 to it before anybody has played anything. [12][14]
11
The first Steam Frame reviews disagree

Reviewers had Valve's headset for weeks before the price was announced, and came back split. The Verge's reviewer tested it for nearly three weeks and called it the most comfortable he has worn, at just over a pound. He said it is less a VR headset than a wearable PC that also streams a player's whole Steam library. Kotaku's reviewer was unconvinced and called it a confusing creation. IGN reported there is no new Valve game to launch it: it runs on a Qualcomm phone processor and ships with Half-Life: Alyx from 2020. [29][28][31]

Why it matters — At $1,059 the headset's strongest argument is the Steam library a buyer already owns, rather than anything new to play on it. [29][31][30]
12
Bungie denies a leaked merger plan

A large batch of documents said to be Bungie's internal plans went online, originating on 4Chan and collected on Reddit. One claim was that Bungie would fold its long-running shooter Destiny into Marathon, the game it is making now. Julia Nardin, Marathon's creative director, who has worked on both, wrote on X that the merger part is fake, and that the two share a lot of Bungie's DNA but are separate. She did not address the rest of the leak. [22]

Why it matters — Bungie knocked down one specific claim and left every other detail standing, which is an invitation to read the rest. [22]
13
A vampire role-playing game cost $40m

The Blood of Dawnwalker, from the Warsaw studio Rebel Wolves, was made on about $40 million supplied by the Chinese company NetEase, according to a Bloomberg report. Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, a lead developer on The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, paid for the first year himself while a small team built a prototype; NetEase then funded the game and took 26% of the studio. For comparison, IO Interactive's 007 First Light is reported at over $200 million. The game found an audience. [23]

Why it matters — Most studios closing this month were spending more than they were earning. A $40 million game that works is the example the rest of the industry is hunting for. [23][10]
14
Resident Evil film takes $108m in three days

The Resident Evil film directed by Zach Cregger and released by Sony took $60 million in the United States and Canada and $48.3 million elsewhere on its opening weekend, the best the series has had. Most forecasts had put the domestic figure at $40 million to $50 million. The film uses an original character played by Austin Abrams rather than the games' cast, and retells none of their stories. Resident Evil is Capcom's horror games series, and the earlier run of films starred Milla Jovovich. [24]
- United States and Canada60 m dollars · 55%
- Everywhere else48.3 m dollars · 45%
Where the opening weekend's $108.3 million came from.
Why it matters — Capcom licensed a games brand to a studio that then threw out the characters, and it beat every earlier attempt that kept them. [24]
15
India's first PC publisher raises $1m

1312 Interactive, which describes itself as India's first publishing house dedicated to PC and console games, has raised $1 million in seed funding led by T-Accelerate Capital and ChimeraVC. A publisher pays for a game's production, marketing, testing and translation, and takes a share of sales. Founded in 2024 by Deepak Gurijala and Raviteja Mantena, it published Winds of Arcana: Ruination last year and Palm Sugar: A Village Story last month, with two more games due in October. [25]

Why it matters — India has no shortage of studios making games for other countries' publishers. This is a small amount of money aimed at the step that has been missing at home. [25]
16
A modder adds the map FromSoftware won't

FromSoftware has stopped adding to Elden Ring Nightreign, the co-op spin-off of its 2022 game. A modder called Doneda has rebuilt Eleum Loyce, a frozen city from 2014's Dark Souls 2, as a playable map inside it and released it free on Nexus Mods. It needs a separate tool, Mod Engine 3, to run. Doneda previously restored a cut sewer level that Dark Souls 2 never shipped, and says more Nightreign maps are coming. [26]

Why it matters — Once a studio stops paying people to add to a game, whether anything more arrives depends entirely on whether somebody will do it for nothing. [26]
17
A screen that redraws 720 times a second

LG Display, the South Korean company that makes screens for monitor and television brands, announced a 24.5-inch OLED gaming panel that refreshes 720 times a second, which it says is the highest rate of any gaming OLED screen. Refresh rate is how many times a second the picture is redrawn. The company says the response time is 0.02 milliseconds and that the gain shows in fast shooters and racing games. This is a parts announcement from the maker, not a monitor on sale. [27]

Why it matters — Competitive players are the group most likely to notice 720 redraws a second. LG Display says it wants to move the gaming monitor market from LCD screens to OLED ones, and this panel has gone to a monitor maker first. [27]

02 Lesson why it matters

Why a game pays you to come back tomorrow

A game that keeps earning after you have bought it needs you to open it again tomorrow, so it hands you a small reward for doing exactly that.

The twist

A daily login bonus looks like a present from the studio. It is a payment for tomorrow, and the studio pays it in items that cost it nothing to make.

The picture

Notifications to a child nowany hour

Under the draft lawnone 10pm to 8am

One of the things the draft would ban is the late-night nudge to come back. Eight hours, every night, for anyone under 18.

How it works

A game that earns after the sale needs you to open it again tomorrow
So it hands you something for opening it: a daily bonus, a streak, a reward you lose by skipping a day
Social apps are paid the same way and built the same rewards
The EU's draft describes those rewards, not the industry that uses them
So a game is covered by a law that was argued about as a social media law

The same force, elsewhere today

Where this chain is also running, in today's other stories.

A new creature game hits 166,000 players

Aniimo earns from what players buy inside it, so its income lasts exactly as long as people keep opening it
A Marvel fighting game empties out

Marvel Tokon needs an opponent online, so when the daily count fell under 1,000 the game stopped working, not just stopped selling
A modder adds the map FromSoftware won't

FromSoftware stopped supplying new reasons to open Elden Ring Nightreign, and an unpaid modder started supplying them instead

Where you've seen this

Coffee shop loyalty cards

the tenth cup is free, so the ninth stamp is what walks you past the other shop

Language learning apps

a streak counter turns a missed evening into a loss, which pulls harder than the lesson does

Airline points

miles expire if you stop flying, so the airline buys your next trip with something it prints itself

The catch

Plenty of daily rewards were not built to trap anybody, and the draft does not ask. It names the feature, so a generous version and a grasping one are treated the same.

And the whole of it

Anyone who has opened an app late at night so a number would not reset has felt this from the inside. The people building those counters are hitting targets somebody above them set, and the politicians are arguing over a definition because the wording is the only part any of them can reach.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

The European Commission wrote the KIDS Act as a law about children and social media, and its own definition of an online game covers anything you can buy or update online. Paul Diegel, who advises the European Parliament member Marketa Gregorova, says that reaches a single-player game which only talks to Steam to fetch a patch. [2]

Why it works on us — Ursula von der Leyen framed it as limiting what tech companies may do to children rather than what children may do, and almost nobody wants to argue with that sentence, so the argument about which products are actually covered has barely started. [5]

Who gains

Large platforms with their own account systems — The draft puts the heaviest planning duties on services with 45 million or more monthly users in the EU, and a company that already runs accounts and payments has most of an age check built. [3]
Resellers of Steam Frame places — Valve's $1,059 reservation is being listed on eBay from $1,700, and the 1TB place from about $2,000. [12]
Memory chip makers — AI data centres are bidding for the same chips games machines need, which is why SK hynix is in talks about US factories and why PC prices are up. [16][18]
Rebel Wolves and NetEase — The Blood of Dawnwalker found its audience on about $40 million, against the $200 million-plus budgets of games it sits beside. [23]
Sony — By naming no PlayStation 6 date it avoids pricing a console into the worst of the memory spike, and the film it released took $108.3 million in three days. [15][24]

Who pays

Heart Machine's staff — Nearly everyone at the studio was laid off when a publishing deal collapsed, in the fourth round of cuts in under three years. [10]
Small studios selling in Europe — If the definition holds, a one-person single-player game sold on Steam needs an age check and parental controls, and the draft names no exemption by size. [2][1]
People buying a gaming PC — The cheapest built machine with a mid-range Nvidia card that PC Gamer could find this week is $1,399, and that one uses a repurposed laptop processor. [17]
Marvel Tokon's PC buyers — The 24-hour peak fell to 994 players, so a game that only works against other people has almost nobody to play against. [11]
Wardogs players who pick blue — A reputation attached to the colour within days, so blue almost never wins and some matches never start. [21]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

Whether the final law keeps the wide definition of an online game.

Rock Paper Shotgun reads the current text as catching single-player games that use Steam only for updates, and says the definition is very likely to be narrowed as the Parliament and member governments work on it. Nobody can say what it will say. [2][1]
02

What a game would actually have to do before letting a child download it.

Reuters reports that game platforms must verify a child's age before a download, while the Commission's own app is described as a yes-or-no check a platform can rely on. The draft does not say who pays for the check on a small studio's game. [4][7]
03

Whether the loot-box and in-game-currency rule applies to games at all.

Andreas Lober found it in the draft's explanatory opening for games but not in the binding text, where the money rules are limited to social networks and video sites. He cannot tell whether that is a drafting slip or a decision. [1]
04

Whether Heart Machine survives.

Studio head Alx Preston said he does not know what is next and that the studio will keep pushing while it is still there. He has not named the publisher that walked away or the game the deal was for. [10]
05

How much of the Steam Frame's $1,059 is the memory and storage inside it.

Valve's Jeremy Selan blamed the global memory and storage markets for the price, and Valve has not said whether it is selling the headset at cost as it does the Steam Machine. No component figure has been published. [14]
06

When the PlayStation 6 arrives, and what Sony will charge for it.

Sony's Hiroki Totoki said only that no date is settled. Analysts had expected 2027, and Sony has said it weighed a delay because of memory prices. [15]
07

Whether SK hynix and Intel do a deal at all.

Reuters has it from three people familiar with the talks, with two possible shapes, and neither company has announced anything. Earlier reports of a narrower arrangement were also unconfirmed. [16]
08

How many copies Marvel Tokon has really sold.

The 740,000 figure is an estimate from the research firm Alinea covering all machines. Sony has published no number of its own. [11]

04 Hope carry this

1312 Interactive, which says it is the first publishing house in India dedicated to PC and console games, raised a million dollars this week. It published two games this year and has two more due in October.

Also true today

A modder called Doneda rebuilt Eleum Loyce, a frozen city from a 2014 Dark Souls game, as a playable map inside Elden Ring Nightreign and gave it away. FromSoftware has stopped adding to that game.
The European Commission's age-check app tells a website only yes or no. It keeps no identity documents, no biometric data and no central record of who was checked, and its code is open for anyone to inspect.