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International / No single location · Technology

EU investigates video game companies over in-game purchases

Rank
Ran
29h
Updated
4d ago
Final
Outlets
8
Regions
3
Countries
5
Languages
4

+0

Anadolu Agency Turkey · English 30 Sept, 15:48 UTC

The earliest of 5 English reports

Read it also in Nederlands (1) · Norsk (1) · Türkçe (1) · +2 languages

Read at Anadolu Agency

How it spread

Outlets covering the story by hours since its first article: one at the start, 8 after 30 hours.

2 4 6 8
0h 6h 12h 18h 24h

Outlets, by hours since the first article

  1. First outlet: VRT NWS, 30 Sept, 11:29 UTC.
  2. Second country: Turkey, with Anadolu Agency.
  3. Second region: Middle East, with Anadolu Agency.
  4. Fastest hour: +2 outlets from 30 Sept, 15:48 UTC.
  5. Last article: 8 outlets.

Where it travelled

30 of 30 hours

Earlier Later

The 5 countries whose press covered it, the later a country joined, the more it stands out. Open the live map

The regions

13%50%37%

  • Asia-Pacific 1 outlet · 1 country · 13%
  • Europe 4 outlets · 3 countries · 50%
  • Middle East 3 outlets · 1 country · 37%

First movers

  1. VRT NWS 30 Sept, 11:29 UTC
  2. Anadolu Agency +4h 19m
  3. Daily Times +5h
  4. RTÉ +11h 30m
  5. Irish Independent +17h

Last to join

  1. Daily Sabah 1 Oct, 17:19 UTC
  2. VG 1 Oct, 16:30 UTC
  3. Sözcü 1 Oct, 10:15 UTC
  4. Irish Independent 1 Oct, 04:30 UTC
  5. RTÉ 30 Sept, 23:00 UTC

The figures

Coverage
8 outlets in 5 countries, across 3 regions. The article links last a week past the story’s last article; the outlet list is permanent. Of the 8 outlets, 1 state-owned, 2 public-service, 5 private. A count of countries is not a count of independent press systems.
Countries by region
Asia-Pacific 1: Pakistan. Europe 3: Belgium, Ireland, Norway. Middle East 1: Turkey. The region a country’s press publishes from, as the feed list files it; the outlets that publish from no single country count as one country under International.
Languages
English, Dutch, Norwegian, Turkish.
Timeline
Earliest article VRT NWS, 30 Sept 2026, 11:29 UTC. First seen 30 Sept 2026, 11:40 UTC. Last seen 1 Oct 2026, 17:19 UTC. The earliest article is the earliest claimed publication time among the outlets Loudest reads, a claim rather than an observation and not a record of who broke the story (the data files call it the lead article); first seen is when Loudest first fetched an article of it, from which the running time counts.
Classification
Region International. Topic Technology. Hard news Judged hard news. On the map. Whether the story is hard news under the rule in the methodology, judged from its headlines by a model; a story judged outside the rule is left off the map and kept here. The region and country are where the story is about, not where it was covered.
Score
None now: last seen more than 48 hours ago, so off the ranking. One vote per general-press country and a smaller term for outlets, each counted from the moment it joined the story and fading on its own clock, so a late article does not renew the rest. A day in the archive keeps the score it was ranked by that day.
Day by day

Outlets and countries are the story’s whole life as of that midnight; the 24-hour columns are that day’s own coverage; the last column is the methodology version the day was measured under, and a day that spans a change of version shows the first and last, linked to the changelog that lists every version between. A day marked partial is one Loudest read only in part: fewer than 130 of its 144 ten-minute runs, or more than 30 minutes missed at its start or end.

Day Rank Score Outlets Countries 24h outlets 24h countries Method
30 Sept 2026 256 4.95 4 4 4 4 4.0
1 Oct 2026 275 4.37 8 5 4 3 4.0

This record as JSON, CC BY 4.0.

How this was measured

This page describes measured coverage: which of the outlets Loudest reads carried the story, from how many countries and in how many languages, and when. It says nothing about whether the story is true, important or well reported.

Started 30 Sept, 11:40 UTC · Updated 1 Oct, 17:19 UTC

Covered by 8 outlets

Pin outlets you trust with ☆ and they come first in every story.

Asia-Pacific 1 outlet

  • Daily Times Pakistan 30 Sept, 16:30 UTC
    EU investigates game companies over virtual currency rules

Europe 4 outlets

  • VG Norway 1 Oct, 16:30 UTC
    Minecraft og Candy Crush omfattes av stor EU-aksjon
  • Irish Independent Ireland 1 Oct, 04:30 UTC
    ‘In-game purchases’ in Minecraft and Candy Crush among targets of EU competition swoop
  • RTÉ Ireland 30 Sept, 23:00 UTC
    Online game companies investigated over in-game purchases
  • VRT NWS Belgium 30 Sept, 11:29 UTC
    EU onderzoekt mogelijke inbreuken op regels rond virtuele munten in games als 'Minecraft' en 'Candy crush'

Middle East 3 outlets

  • Daily Sabah Turkey 1 Oct, 17:19 UTC
    9 video game companies probed by EU over virtual currencies
  • Sözcü Turkey 1 Oct, 10:15 UTC
    AB'den 9 oyun şirketine soruşturma
  • Anadolu Agency Turkey 30 Sept, 15:48 UTC
    EU consumer authorities launch coordinated action targeting video game companies
Read at Anadolu Agency

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