What Parents Should Know About In-Game Purchases

§01What exactly counts as an in-game purchase?

An in-game purchase is any transaction made from inside a game rather than at the point of buying the game itself. This covers a wide range of things, from a one-time expansion pack to small recurring currency top-ups.

• Cosmetics: outfits, skins, emotes, or vehicle designs that change appearance but not gameplay power.
• Currency: premium coins or gems bought with real money, then spent inside the game.
• Loot boxes or card packs: randomized rewards where the player doesn’t know exactly what they’ll get.
• Battle passes or seasons: a paid track of rewards unlocked by playing over a set period.
• Convenience or power items: things that speed up progress or make a character stronger.
• Full expansions or DLC: substantial new content, closer to buying a second game.

Many of the games built around this model are free to download and covered in more depth in our explainer on how free-to-play games actually make money. Understanding that business model helps explain why the purchase prompts appear as often as they do.

§02Why do games push purchases so hard?

Games push purchases because a small percentage of players spending repeatedly is what funds ongoing development, especially for titles that keep adding content for years. This is central to how live service games stay profitable long after launch.

That doesn’t make the design manipulative by default, but it does mean the systems are built by teams who study what makes players want to open their wallets again. Countdown timers, limited-time offers, and streaks that reset if you stop paying are common tools. None of these require a child to be doing anything wrong — they are simply effective at prompting a purchase in the moment.

§03How do accidental purchases actually happen?

Accidental purchases usually happen because a card is already saved to the account, a purchase confirmation setting has been left off, or a child doesn’t realize an in-game action costs real money rather than in-game currency. Consoles, phones, and PCs each handle this differently.

A few common scenarios worth knowing about:

• A store account has “buy now” enabled with no password or PIN required for each purchase.
• A gift card balance sits on the account, so a child assumes anything they buy is “free” because no card prompt appears.
• In-game currency is deliberately awkward to spend in round amounts, so buying a specific item nudges toward buying more currency than needed.
• A younger player doesn’t understand the difference between free in-game currency earned by playing and premium currency bought with real money.

Every major platform has settings that can require a password for each purchase, disable purchases entirely on a specific profile, or set a spending limit. These sit alongside broader parental control features, which are covered in detail in our guide to what parental controls actually do on each console.

§04Are loot boxes the same as gambling?

Loot boxes are not gambling in the legal sense in most places, but they share some of the same psychological mechanics, since the player pays before knowing exactly what they’ll receive. This resemblance has made loot boxes one of the most debated topics in the industry.

Some countries and regions have introduced disclosure rules requiring games to show the odds of getting rare items. Age rating bodies have also started flagging games that include this kind of randomized paid content, which is one more reason it’s worth understanding how age ratings on video games actually work before assuming a rating only reflects violence or language.

Whether a particular loot box system crosses a line into something that feels like gambling is genuinely a matter of judgement, and reasonable parents land in different places on it. What’s not in dispute is that the mechanic is designed to be repeated.

§05What should parents actually check before letting a kid play?

Before handing over a device, it helps to check whether purchases require a password, whether a payment method is stored on the account, and whether the specific game includes a store, battle pass, or loot box system at all. Not every game does.

• Look at the game’s store page or box. Digital storefronts and physical packaging both list whether a game includes in-game purchases.
• Set a family or child profile. Most consoles and app stores let you attach a separate profile with its own restrictions rather than sharing the main account.
• Turn on purchase confirmation. A password or PIN prompt for every transaction is the single most effective habit.
• Remove or limit stored payment methods. Using gift cards with a fixed balance instead of a linked card caps the maximum possible spend.
• Talk about what currency actually costs. Younger players often don’t connect “500 gems” with a real price until it’s explained plainly.

For a broader sense of whether a game is a good fit at all — beyond just the spending question — our guide on how to tell if a game is appropriate for a younger player covers content, tone, and online interaction as well.

§06Is it better to buy a game outright instead?

A full-price game with no ongoing store is generally more predictable to budget for than a free game supported by purchases, though it isn’t automatically a better game. The trade-off is upfront cost versus the risk of repeated smaller charges over time.

Some families prefer the one-time cost of a traditional purchase precisely because it draws a clear line: the money is spent once, and nothing more is expected. Others are comfortable with free-to-play titles as long as purchase controls are locked down properly. Deciding whether a game is worth full price is a useful exercise even for free titles, since it reframes the question as “what would I be comfortable spending on this over a year,” rather than reacting to prompts one at a time.

Subscription services are sometimes offered as a middle ground, bundling access to a library of games for a recurring fee instead of per-item purchases. Whether that arrangement is worth it depends heavily on how a family actually plays, which our piece on whether game subscription services are good value looks at in more detail.

§07What about screen time and spending together?

Spending and screen time tend to be connected, since games designed to encourage repeat purchases are often also designed to encourage long, frequent play sessions. Managing one without thinking about the other misses half the picture.

Daily login rewards, time-limited events, and battle passes with expiry dates are all mechanics that push toward “just one more session” as much as “just one more purchase.” Parents weighing how much play is reasonable may find it useful to read alongside this our guide on how much screen time is reasonable for games, since the two questions usually need to be answered together rather than separately.

§08What’s the simplest habit that actually works?

The simplest and most reliable habit is requiring a password or PIN for every single purchase, with no exceptions, on every account a child uses. This one setting removes almost all accidental spending regardless of the game or platform.

Beyond that single habit, periodic conversation matters more than any technical restriction. Asking a child to explain what a particular in-game purchase actually does, before deciding whether to allow it, tends to reveal whether they understand it’s real money at all — and that understanding is worth more long-term than any spending cap.