The Rules Glossary · Gaming

AB 2426: the California law, in force from 2025, that bars "buy" or "purchase" wording for revocable digital goods unless the buyer is told, or acknowledges, that the purchase is a license (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Accessibility Nutrition Labels: Apple's per-device App Store declarations of supported accessibility features, voluntary to start (Accessibility).
Accessibility settings: settings per account with device overrides, seeded from the platform's caption, contrast and narration settings, reachable before the first cinematic, and never reset by live config (Accessibility).
Accessible Games Initiative: the ESA-led set of voluntary accessibility tags with criteria, announced March 20, 2025 (Accessibility).
Action remapping: binding physical inputs to actions through a table the player edits, with hold, toggle and repeat as properties of the binding and every prompt reading the current binding (Accessibility).
Age band: an account's age as a band (under_13, 13_15, 16_17, adult, unknown) rather than a birth date, derived from its age signals (the lowest wins) and cached on the account, never set directly; unknown gets the youngest band's defaults (Accounts, Identity & Cross-Platform; the rules it drives are in Ratings, Age & Children).
Age signals: platform APIs that pass a player's age band to the game under state app-store laws: Apple's Declared Age Range API and Google's Play Age Signals API; each answer is stored as an append-only signal the account's band is derived from (Ratings, Age & Children).
Assists: separate settings (game speed, timing windows, skipping events, aim help) rather than difficulty presets, with a per-mode policy and the assist state recorded on the match participant (Accessibility).
Build features join: a CI join of build_features, the features a build declares (paid random items, time-limited offers, chat) and what the live ratings say, so a new feature triggers a re-rating before release (Ratings, Age & Children).
Camera comfort: settings that scale or disable camera shake, bob, sway, motion blur and automatic camera movement, plus an adjustable field of view (Accessibility).
Consolidated rate: the effective chance of a top-tier item once pity is counted; a 1% base rate with a guarantee on the 50th draw gives 39.50 expected draws, a 2.53% rate (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Controller Assist, Copilot: platform features that merge two controllers into one input below the game, so a helper can play alongside the player (Accessibility).
COPPA: the US rule for online services directed to children under 13 or with actual knowledge of one; in games it reaches display names usable as contact information, voice audio and persistent identifiers (Ratings, Age & Children).
CPC principles: the EU consumer authorities' March 2025 principles on purchased virtual currency: real-money prices, no obscured costs or forced bundles, pre-contractual information, withdrawal rights, fair terms and care for minors (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
CVAA: the US law requiring advanced communications services, a category in-game text and voice chat can fall into, to be accessible where achievable; the FCC's class waiver for video game software ended on December 31, 2018 (Accessibility).
Drop table: the possible outcomes of a random draw and their weights, versioned with integer weights, immutable once published, and the single source for both the server's roll and the disclosed odds (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law; each roll is an item_rolls row in Inventories, Entitlements & Economies).
DSA (Digital Services Act): the EU law whose Article 28 bars ads based on profiling on online platforms when the provider is reasonably certain the user is a minor, and whose Articles 16, 17 and 20 set notice-and-action, statement-of-reasons and complaint duties for game chat and UGC (Player Behavior & Moderation; Monetization Models).
Effects intensity: a player setting that dims or removes flashes, strobes and patterns, deliberately not called an epilepsy safe mode (Accessibility).
End-of-life patch, offline mode: a final update that lets a game run without the publisher's backend, usually saving progress locally and disabling online systems (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
ESRB: the North American rating board (E, E10+, T, M, AO), whose Interactive Elements such as In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items) label a game without changing its age rating (Ratings, Age & Children).
Geofence: turning a feature off by region, keyed to the billing country and store region rather than the IP address alone, as paid random items are for Belgium (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
IARC: the International Age Rating Coalition's system, where one questionnaire issues each participating authority's rating for digital storefronts; the answers are stored with the build they described (Ratings, Age & Children).
Integer weights: odds stored as whole-number weights over a fixed total (10,000 makes each unit 0.01%), so displayed probabilities are exact and sum to 100.00 (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Kompu gacha (complete gacha): a prize for collecting a full set of items from paid draws, held unlawful in Japan in 2012 under the premiums law (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Loot box, paid random item: a purchase whose contents the buyer doesn't know in advance (gacha, card packs, prize wheels), including ones bought with currency bought for money (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Odds audit: a daily test of observed outcomes against the disclosed base and consolidated rates per live table version, with the results kept as the answer to anyone who asks (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Odds disclosure: publishing the chance of each item before purchase, required by Apple, Google Play and China, and in the FTC's HoYoverse order together with multi-tiered currency exchange rates (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Online Safety Act: the UK law reaching any service where users interact with each other, which puts game chat and voice in scope; Ofcom enforces its illegal-harms and children's duties (Ratings, Age & Children; Player Behavior & Moderation).
PEGI: the European rating system (3, 7, 12, 16, 18) whose interactive risk descriptors now change the age: paid random items are PEGI 16 by default for games submitted from June 2026, and existing games were re-rated from October 2026 (Ratings, Age & Children).
Photosensitivity (flash thresholds): flashing or patterns that can trigger seizures; content fails at more than about three luminance or saturated-red flashes a second over a large part of the screen, so the renderer budgets flashes and every build is tested (Accessibility).
Pity: a guarantee of a top-tier result after a number of draws without one (soft pity raises the rate before it); counters are derived from openings and stored on each one (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Play-by-appointment: rewards for returning, such as daily quests and login streaks; PEGI 7 from June 2026, and PEGI 12 when players lose content or progress for not returning (Ratings, Age & Children).
Private server edition: a release of a game's server software that players can host themselves after the official servers close (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Real-name registration: China's requirement that every game account is registered and signed in with a verified identity, which the minors' playtime limits depend on (Ratings, Age & Children).
Right of withdrawal: the EU's 14-day cancellation right; lost for digital content only with express consent, and treated by the CPC principles as still covering unused purchased currency (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Screen narration: UI read by the platform screen reader or a speech synthesizer in the order name, role, value, position, which needs an accessibility tree under the UI (Accessibility).
Self-classification (Korea): age rating by GRAC-designated operators such as storefronts, which GRAC monitors and can override (Ratings, Age & Children).
Significant change: under Utah's app-store law, a material change such as new monetization features or an altered age rating, which needs a parent's approval before a child sees it (Ratings, Age & Children).
Speech-to-text, text-to-speech chat: other players' voice shown as live text, and typed text spoken on the voice channel; blocks, mutes and filters apply to both (Accessibility).
Spending limit: a per-account cap on real-money purchases per day, week or month, set by default, the player, a parent or support, and checked against pending and completed purchases before one starts; child accounts start at zero (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Stop Killing Games, Stop Destroying Videogames: the campaign and its European Citizens' Initiative asking that games sold in the EU be left playable after support ends; the Commission declined to legislate in June 2026 (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Subtitles, captions: text for speech, and text for all audio including sound effects and who is speaking; at most 40 characters a line and two lines on screen, on before the first sound (Accessibility).
Support for the internal operations: COPPA's exception allowing persistent identifiers without consent for keeping a service working, security and anti-cheat, never for profiling or behavioral ads (Ratings, Age & Children).
Usage risks (USK): interactive features such as chat, purchases, random items and location sharing that Germany's USK has weighed in age ratings since 2023 (Ratings, Age & Children).
VR comfort rating: a store's required label for how much camera and player motion a VR app has; Meta's are Comfortable, Moderate and Intense (Accessibility).
Whale: a player who spends far more than most; the EU's CPC principles say games whose business model targets them are assessed against a stricter threshold (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Xbox Accessibility Guidelines (XAGs): Microsoft's numbered best practices for game accessibility (101 text, 102 contrast, 104 subtitles, 106 narration, 107 input, 117 motion, 118 photosensitivity, 119 speech-to-text and text-to-speech), with testable numbers but no compliance role (Accessibility).

AB 2426: the California law, in force from 2025, that bars "buy" or "purchase" wording for revocable digital goods unless the buyer is told, or acknowledges, that the purchase is a license (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Accessibility Nutrition Labels: Apple's per-device App Store declarations of supported accessibility features, voluntary to start (Accessibility).
Accessibility settings: settings per account with device overrides, seeded from the platform's caption, contrast and narration settings, reachable before the first cinematic, and never reset by live config (Accessibility).
Accessible Games Initiative: the ESA-led set of voluntary accessibility tags with criteria, announced March 20, 2025 (Accessibility).
Action remapping: binding physical inputs to actions through a table the player edits, with hold, toggle and repeat as properties of the binding and every prompt reading the current binding (Accessibility).
Age band: an account's age as a band (under_13, 13_15, 16_17, adult, unknown) rather than a birth date, derived from its age signals (the lowest wins) and cached on the account, never set directly; unknown gets the youngest band's defaults (Accounts, Identity & Cross-Platform; the rules it drives are in Ratings, Age & Children).
Age signals: platform APIs that pass a player's age band to the game under state app-store laws: Apple's Declared Age Range API and Google's Play Age Signals API; each answer is stored as an append-only signal the account's band is derived from (Ratings, Age & Children).
Assists: separate settings (game speed, timing windows, skipping events, aim help) rather than difficulty presets, with a per-mode policy and the assist state recorded on the match participant (Accessibility).
Build features join: a CI join of build_features, the features a build declares (paid random items, time-limited offers, chat) and what the live ratings say, so a new feature triggers a re-rating before release (Ratings, Age & Children).
Camera comfort: settings that scale or disable camera shake, bob, sway, motion blur and automatic camera movement, plus an adjustable field of view (Accessibility).
Consolidated rate: the effective chance of a top-tier item once pity is counted; a 1% base rate with a guarantee on the 50th draw gives 39.50 expected draws, a 2.53% rate (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Controller Assist, Copilot: platform features that merge two controllers into one input below the game, so a helper can play alongside the player (Accessibility).
COPPA: the US rule for online services directed to children under 13 or with actual knowledge of one; in games it reaches display names usable as contact information, voice audio and persistent identifiers (Ratings, Age & Children).
CPC principles: the EU consumer authorities' March 2025 principles on purchased virtual currency: real-money prices, no obscured costs or forced bundles, pre-contractual information, withdrawal rights, fair terms and care for minors (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
CVAA: the US law requiring advanced communications services, a category in-game text and voice chat can fall into, to be accessible where achievable; the FCC's class waiver for video game software ended on December 31, 2018 (Accessibility).
Drop table: the possible outcomes of a random draw and their weights, versioned with integer weights, immutable once published, and the single source for both the server's roll and the disclosed odds (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law; each roll is an item_rolls row in Inventories, Entitlements & Economies).
DSA (Digital Services Act): the EU law whose Article 28 bars ads based on profiling on online platforms when the provider is reasonably certain the user is a minor, and whose Articles 16, 17 and 20 set notice-and-action, statement-of-reasons and complaint duties for game chat and UGC (Player Behavior & Moderation; Monetization Models).
Effects intensity: a player setting that dims or removes flashes, strobes and patterns, deliberately not called an epilepsy safe mode (Accessibility).
End-of-life patch, offline mode: a final update that lets a game run without the publisher's backend, usually saving progress locally and disabling online systems (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
ESRB: the North American rating board (E, E10+, T, M, AO), whose Interactive Elements such as In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items) label a game without changing its age rating (Ratings, Age & Children).
Geofence: turning a feature off by region, keyed to the billing country and store region rather than the IP address alone, as paid random items are for Belgium (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
IARC: the International Age Rating Coalition's system, where one questionnaire issues each participating authority's rating for digital storefronts; the answers are stored with the build they described (Ratings, Age & Children).
Integer weights: odds stored as whole-number weights over a fixed total (10,000 makes each unit 0.01%), so displayed probabilities are exact and sum to 100.00 (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Kompu gacha (complete gacha): a prize for collecting a full set of items from paid draws, held unlawful in Japan in 2012 under the premiums law (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Loot box, paid random item: a purchase whose contents the buyer doesn't know in advance (gacha, card packs, prize wheels), including ones bought with currency bought for money (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Odds audit: a daily test of observed outcomes against the disclosed base and consolidated rates per live table version, with the results kept as the answer to anyone who asks (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Odds disclosure: publishing the chance of each item before purchase, required by Apple, Google Play and China, and in the FTC's HoYoverse order together with multi-tiered currency exchange rates (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Online Safety Act: the UK law reaching any service where users interact with each other, which puts game chat and voice in scope; Ofcom enforces its illegal-harms and children's duties (Ratings, Age & Children; Player Behavior & Moderation).
PEGI: the European rating system (3, 7, 12, 16, 18) whose interactive risk descriptors now change the age: paid random items are PEGI 16 by default for games submitted from June 2026, and existing games were re-rated from October 2026 (Ratings, Age & Children).
Photosensitivity (flash thresholds): flashing or patterns that can trigger seizures; content fails at more than about three luminance or saturated-red flashes a second over a large part of the screen, so the renderer budgets flashes and every build is tested (Accessibility).
Pity: a guarantee of a top-tier result after a number of draws without one (soft pity raises the rate before it); counters are derived from openings and stored on each one (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Play-by-appointment: rewards for returning, such as daily quests and login streaks; PEGI 7 from June 2026, and PEGI 12 when players lose content or progress for not returning (Ratings, Age & Children).
Private server edition: a release of a game's server software that players can host themselves after the official servers close (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Real-name registration: China's requirement that every game account is registered and signed in with a verified identity, which the minors' playtime limits depend on (Ratings, Age & Children).
Right of withdrawal: the EU's 14-day cancellation right; lost for digital content only with express consent, and treated by the CPC principles as still covering unused purchased currency (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Screen narration: UI read by the platform screen reader or a speech synthesizer in the order name, role, value, position, which needs an accessibility tree under the UI (Accessibility).
Self-classification (Korea): age rating by GRAC-designated operators such as storefronts, which GRAC monitors and can override (Ratings, Age & Children).
Significant change: under Utah's app-store law, a material change such as new monetization features or an altered age rating, which needs a parent's approval before a child sees it (Ratings, Age & Children).
Speech-to-text, text-to-speech chat: other players' voice shown as live text, and typed text spoken on the voice channel; blocks, mutes and filters apply to both (Accessibility).
Spending limit: a per-account cap on real-money purchases per day, week or month, set by default, the player, a parent or support, and checked against pending and completed purchases before one starts; child accounts start at zero (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Stop Killing Games, Stop Destroying Videogames: the campaign and its European Citizens' Initiative asking that games sold in the EU be left playable after support ends; the Commission declined to legislate in June 2026 (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Subtitles, captions: text for speech, and text for all audio including sound effects and who is speaking; at most 40 characters a line and two lines on screen, on before the first sound (Accessibility).
Support for the internal operations: COPPA's exception allowing persistent identifiers without consent for keeping a service working, security and anti-cheat, never for profiling or behavioral ads (Ratings, Age & Children).
Usage risks (USK): interactive features such as chat, purchases, random items and location sharing that Germany's USK has weighed in age ratings since 2023 (Ratings, Age & Children).
VR comfort rating: a store's required label for how much camera and player motion a VR app has; Meta's are Comfortable, Moderate and Intense (Accessibility).
Whale: a player who spends far more than most; the EU's CPC principles say games whose business model targets them are assessed against a stricter threshold (Loot Boxes & Consumer Law).
Xbox Accessibility Guidelines (XAGs): Microsoft's numbered best practices for game accessibility (101 text, 102 contrast, 104 subtitles, 106 narration, 107 input, 117 motion, 118 photosensitivity, 119 speech-to-text and text-to-speech), with testable numbers but no compliance role (Accessibility).