Commission Cannot Cost the EU Kids Act

If you run a small game studio in Europe, the EU Kids Act applies to you, and the European Commission cannot tell you what compliance will cost. The proposal, presented on 17 September 2026, would impose age checks and parental controls, games included.

Its own explanatory memorandum says it is “not possible to conclusively determine the costs of these adjustments and their incidence.” Small and micro enterprises are not exempted, the memorandum adds, because they “may equally provide harms to minors.”

Small studios sit inside the rulebook

The proposal covers any game played on a computer, a mobile device or a console. It exempts online games accessible exclusively through physical media, and educational services run by educational bodies. Micro and small providers get one narrow carve-out: they are released from post-market monitoring duties for AI companions and chatbots.

The Commission argues that the burden stays manageable. Its design of compliance plans and audits, it says, “should limit the impact on SMEs.” That sentence covers those two duties only, and it sits in the same paragraph as the admission that total costs cannot be fixed.

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The duties themselves are wide. Olivia Ward of the law firm Burges Salmon writes that games fall under the safety-by-design requirements and that variable rewards such as loot boxes are banned for minors. The proposal also says minors playing online games should get “the same protection in respect of economic transactions” as elsewhere.

The cost study lands after the text

The Commission says an EU age verification solution under development will mitigate costs. It points to the possibly very large number of small and micro providers as the hardest cases.

The supporting analysis explains the gap. In August 2026 the Commission procured a study on the economic impacts of age assurance (methods for checking a user’s age), and its results are “expected to be finalised and published in Q4 2026.”

The Council logged the proposal on 18 September under the ordinary legislative procedure, in which Parliament and Council both amend the text before voting. The study due in the last quarter of the year therefore reaches legislators after the draft does.

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EUobserver reported on 9 October that the impact assessment says third-party age-verification apps would reduce costs but gives no estimate of what those apps cost. Lauro Fava, a partner at the law firm Pinsent Masons, called the missing estimates “strange” and said the Commission arguably downplayed compliance costs.

Age checks are required, but the method is open

The memorandum says self-declaration (a user simply stating their age) is not sufficient. Age verification, the strictest form of checking, is mandated only for the access delay, the access restriction for social media. For other services a later article lets providers use age verification and other age assurance solutions under specific conditions.

Burges Salmon reads this as more flexibility for games, which must still use methods with “a high level of accuracy, reliability, security.” Flexibility on method says nothing about what any method costs.

Enforcement is meant to move in weeks

Andy Ramos and Lucía Mosquera de Ena of the law firm Pérez-Llorca summarised the timetable on 18 September. The regulation would enter into force on the twentieth day after publication in the Official Journal and apply generally six months later. The compliance plan and audit duty would apply from entry into force, and some further provisions follow 12 months after. Burges Salmon thinks the act is unlikely to apply before 2028.

Once proceedings open, the memorandum says the Commission should “endeavour to adopt a final decision within 90 days.” Burges Salmon describes a fast track in which preliminary findings are targeted within 30 working days.

A provider facing such a procedure would answer within weeks to rules whose cost the Commission could not determine when it wrote them.