PEGI is changing the age ratings of games that are already on sale. On October 6, 2026 the pan-European ratings body said that digital-only games rated PEGI 3, 7 or 12 that include paid random items, such as loot boxes, will be moved to PEGI 16. Storefront labels across Europe are being rewritten to match.

Four days later the change reached live game content. On October 10, Epic Games reported that some Fortnite islands had become unavailable in certain regions after PEGI and IARC updated their rating criteria, and that a fix was already rolling out.

What PEGI changed

The announcement sets out the scope in three parts. The games affected are digital-only, currently rated PEGI 3, 7 or 12, and they feature Paid random items such as loot boxes. Those titles move to PEGI 16 with the Paid random items descriptor attached.

PEGI says the updates will be made across all storefronts that use its ratings, and that the work will take some time. Publishers are told to update their product listings and to bring future marketing materials into line.

The ratings body framed the decision as a question of consistency. "Online games can remain available and updated for a very long period of time," Dirk Bosmans, Director of PEGI, said in the announcement. "To avoid that our age ratings over time become inconsistent, we decided to perform this update." He added that the change keeps older games which stay popular in line with current standards.

Why it applies to older games

This is the second stage of a process that started in June 2026, when PEGI added a broader set of classification categories built around interactive risks. Since then, newly submitted games have been judged on in-game purchases, paid random items, communication features and elements that push players to keep playing, with PEGI deciding how far those features should raise an age rating.

October's change takes that same assessment and applies it to games rated before the criteria existed. A game rated years ago under the older system can now move up the scale even though nothing inside the game has changed.

What the label means

Paid random items is PEGI's own descriptor. It covers purchases where the player pays for something whose contents are decided at random, the category most players call loot boxes. The descriptor sits next to the age number rather than replacing it.

It is one of several interactive risk labels in the system. PEGI's rating criteria now also include descriptors for in-game purchases, unrestricted communication, time-limited offers and pressure to play, and its game search exposes each one as a filter. In this update, Paid random items is applied together with the move to PEGI 16.

How Fortnite responded

The Fortnite Status account, which Epic Games uses for service updates, described both the outage and the remedy in a post on October 10. Epic said the islands became unavailable in some regions, that a fix to re-enable them immediately was rolling out, and that they should be playable again within the hour.

The same post set out the interim arrangement. Fortnite is being updated to support the paid random items change. Epic is working with PEGI and IARC on the timing for rolling out the new criteria, and until that happens the affected islands will be temporarily set to a 12 rating over the following few days.

The re-rating reached playable content within a week. Epic's first response was to restore access while the rating work continued.

Which games and how long

PEGI has not published the list of affected games. The announcement describes a selection of existing titles inside the digital-only, PEGI 3, 7 and 12 group, without naming any of them or giving a count.

The timeline is open in the same way. Updates began in October 2026, every storefront that uses PEGI ratings is in scope, and PEGI says the process takes time. No completion date was given. Because storefronts and publishers update their own listings, the same game can show different ratings on different stores while the rollout is under way.

For anyone checking a rating before buying, that means a remembered PEGI number is worth confirming on the store page in front of you. For a publisher with a back-catalogue title in scope, the obligation is specific: update the listing and make the marketing materials match.

Concept diagram of an extended anonymous digital-game catalogue, one representative screen-and-random-item card passing through a filter into an open-ended gradual update flow.
Concept illustration of PEGI's eligibility conditions and gradual rollout across storefronts using PEGI ratings. The foreground card is illustrative only, not an actual affected title or a complete list.

What Epic has not said

Epic's post confirms the effect and the fix but leaves the boundaries vague. It says some regions, without naming them. It gives no count of affected islands and no duration beyond the aim of restoring them within the hour. It also confirms a temporary 12 rating for those islands, which is a lower age number than the PEGI 16 that the re-rating policy produces, and the post does not explain how the two positions fit together or state the final rating once the new criteria are fully in place.

IARC appears in Epic's post as a second body that updated its criteria. The coalition describes itself as a global age rating system for digitally delivered games and apps: it assigns age ratings, content descriptors and interactive-element notices by region, and participating storefronts map those ratings for their own region. PEGI's own announcement does not mention IARC or describe how the two changes relate.

What is still unanswered

PEGI has not said whether any title is exempt or whether a game that removes its paid random items could return to its earlier rating. It has also not said whether the June 2026 criteria will be applied backwards to the other descriptors, in-game purchases among them.