What happened. In January 2026, the Italian Competition and Market Authority (Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato or AGCM) opened two formal investigations (PS13020 and PS13039) into the video game company Activision Blizzard (Microsoft group) concerning its mobile games Diablo Immortal and Call of Duty Mobile — marketed as free-to-play but offering extensive in-game purchases — for alleged misleading and aggressive commercial practices and violations of consumer contractual rights. At the time of writing, the proceedings remain pending and no final decision on the alleged infringements has been adopted.

The specific provisions at issue. The legal framework is the Italian Consumer Code (Legislative Decree No. 206/2005), which implements the EU Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (UCPD, Directive 2005/29/EC). Under Article 20 of the Consumer Code, a commercial practice is unfair if it is contrary to professional diligence and materially distorts — or is likely to distort — consumers’ transactional decisions. This is especially significant in the video game sector, where the audience frequently includes minors, who are vulnerable consumers entitled to heightened protection under the Consumer Code and the UCPD. The European Commission Guidance on the UCPD (par. 4.2.7) has confirmed that these requirements apply to interface design — a particularly significant element in gaming environments.

The conduct under scrutiny.

The AGCM’s investigations cover five areas:

• manipulative interface design, such as the alleged use of repeated prompts not to miss out on reward content – including via in-app messages and push notifications – and to purchase time-limited content before it becomes unavailable;
• opaque virtual currencies, such as strategies designed to obscure the real monetary value of in-game virtual currencies, together with the sale of virtual currencies in predetermined bundles;
• default parental control options, potentially not offering sufficient protection to minors (such as automatically enabling in-game purchases, unlimited play time, and interaction with other players), without active involvement and supervision from parents;
• consent to data processing, such as account registration flows that allegedly lead consumers to grant all consents – including profiling for commercial purposes – under the false impression that this is mandatory;
• alleged consumer rights violations and disclosure failures; for instance, the information provided to players appears drafted to cause them to unknowingly waive their contractual rights (e.g., the right of withdrawal) and the trader’s right to suspend players’ accounts unilaterally and without adequate justification, denying users any right of reply and resulting in the forfeiture of potentially substantial sums spent on digital content.

This is not the first time that these game franchises have come under scrutiny. When Diablo Immortal launched in June 2022, Blizzard decided not to release it in Belgium or the Netherlands at all, citing those countries’ gambling restrictions on loot boxes (i.e. virtual “mystery boxes” containing randomized virtual items). The Call of Duty franchise has similarly been the subject of litigation in the United States (Dunn v. Activision Blizzard, Inc. et al., No. 3:23-cv-00224-JM, E.D. Ark. 2023), which concerned the alleged use of addictive design features and monetization systems – including loot boxes and targeted microtransaction prompts – aimed at maximizing engagement and in-game spending, particularly among minors, in violation of Arkansas consumer protection law.

Regulatory context: a wider EU trend. The AGCM’s investigations form part of a recent EU-wide trend of enforcement and advocacy against unfair practices in the digital gaming sectors.

For example, in September 2024, the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) and 22 national consumer bodies from 17 countries filed a formal complaint with the European Commission and the European Network of Consumer Authorities (CPC-Network) against seven major gaming companies — including Activision Blizzard — denouncing deceptive practices around in-game currencies, manipulative design, and inadequate protection of minors.

More recently, on 14 January 2026, a Dutch court upheld a fine imposed by the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) on Epic Games — developer of Fortnite — for UCPD violations, including the use of interface design creating artificial scarcity and direct exhortation to purchase directed at children. The court upheld the ACM’s approach to “professional diligence”, which the authority had construed by reference to ethical design principles and international standards — notably transparency and the prohibition of harmful or deceptive design — and confirmed that the UCPD does not require proof that consumer behaviour was actually distorted: it suffices that the practice is plausibly likely to produce such effects.

Legal consequences and practical impact. If the AGCM finds violations, it may impose fines and order remedial measures. Under Article 27 of the Italian Consumer Code, sanctions for unfair commercial practices can reach up to €10 million (or, for cross-border infringements, up to 4% of annual turnover). In recent high-profile digital cases — including proceedings against eDreams (PS12853) and Amazon (PS12585) — the AGCM has shown willingness to impose multi-million euro fines. In addition to monetary penalties, the AGCM may require publication of the decision, with significant reputational consequences for the trader, and an AGCM finding of infringement may facilitate follow-on private enforcement actions, as consumers and consumer associations may rely on the authority’s findings to pursue individual or collective damages claims before the civil courts.

The company may also offer binding commitments — behavioural remedies such as changes to interface design, disclosure practices, or default settings — which the AGCM can accept, closing the case without a finding of infringement. This is a common route in digital cases, and one that Activision Blizzard may seek to pursue.

The takeaway. The converging EU trend — spanning regulatory proceedings, court decisions, and consumer advocacy — makes it advisable for traders to take appropriate measures to ensure that the design of their interface does not distort the transactional decisions of consumers. Operators of free-to-play games — and more broadly any digital platform relying on in-game or in-app purchases — should review: their interface design against the UCPD’s professional diligence standard and the emerging principle of ethical design; their virtual currency disclosure obligations under the Consumer Rights Directive and UCPD; their default parental control configurations; their data consent collection flows at registration, ensuring that consent to profiling is genuinely free and not presented as mandatory; and their account termination and refund policies.