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Explained
Created on:
16 Jul 2025
Last updated:
23 Oct 2025
CMA Consultation aims for clear guidance on Price Transparency
TL:DR;
The Competition and Markets Authority is consulting on guidelines for price transparency. The guidance explains how businesses should comply with the Digital Markets, Consumers and Competition Act requirement to display the total price upfront in any invitation to purchase, which effectively bans practices such as drip pricing and partitioned pricing.
'Consultation on Price Transparency Guidance Under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024'
The DMCCA introduced changes to the existing Consumer Protection Regulations (derived from EU law), aimed at further protecting consumers from unfair trading practices. Its provisions mandate the inclusion of specific material information, including certain pricing details, in invitations to purchase; previously, including specific material information was only required if omission would affect a consumer’s transactional decision. The new draft guidance supports businesses with DMCCA compliance by outlining how service providers should present pricing information in an invitation to purchase.
Draft guidance summary
The guidance reiterates the legislative requirement that prices should not mislead and that consumers should be presented with the total price of the product at the outset. To support compliance with the law, the guidance gives a wide range of examples (including what not to do) to illustrate the principles.
To note, this guidance specific relates to price statements within invitations to purchase. Traders may also need to include other information already required under the recent guidance on unfair commercial practices, both in the context of invitations to purchase and more generally.
The draft guidance is set out under 4 sections:
What is an invitation to purchase?
The guidance explains that an invitation to purchase provides information about the product and its price and enables (or purports to enable) the consumer to make a transactional or purchase decision – very roughly speaking*, it’s a commercial communication for a product with a price. Importantly, “a banner within a mobile application advertising an ad-free version of the app or in-app purchases” is specifically given as an example of an invitation to purchase.
(*definitely not legal advice)
What pricing information must be included in an invitation to purchase?
Where a price is stated that price must be transparent: product prices should be realistic, meaningful, and attainable. For instance, this means that ‘from’ prices should be genuinely available for a decent proportion of products on offer, or that a price given for a product should reflect the one advertised (i.e. not showing an upgraded item with the price of a basic model).
The total price of a product should include any fees, taxes, charges or other payments that the consumer will necessarily incur when purchasing. Where any part of the total price cannot be reasonably calculated in advance, information enabling the consumer to calculate the total price must be given with the same prominence as the headline price.
Drip pricing and partitioned pricing are given as specific examples of practices to avoid. Drip pricing occurs when a consumer is initially shown one price for a product or service, but additional, often mandatory, fees are progressively revealed (‘dripped’) later in the purchasing process. This can lead to the final price being significantly higher than initially advertised, making it difficult and time-consuming for consumers to understand the true cost. While commonly associated with service industries like airlines, hotels, and events, drip pricing has also been identified in video games. Related to this, partitioned pricing is where the price of a product or service is presented as a base price plus mandatory surcharges, rather than a single, all-inclusive price.
Total price: core principles
The concept of a total price is so foundational to pricing transparency that the guidance has an entire section on the principles behind it.
The total price of a product should include any fees, taxes, charges or other payments that the consumer will necessarily incur if the consumer purchases the product – the CMA provides a non-exhaustive list of examples, which includes VAT, admin charges, and joining fees.
If it’s not possible to calculate the total price in advance, then the headline price must be accompanied by the information they need to calculate the total price themselves. The CMA gives examples like the price of fabric per metre, the cost of a holiday before dates are given, or per-person charges for a meal.
The information about how to calculate the total price must be set out with ‘as much prominence as’ the part of the total price that is calculable in advance – for the examples given by the CMA, this will be relatively straightforward. In most instances, traders should be able to set out this information, but the CMA acknowledges that in a minority of circumstances there could be a reason for traders to genuinely be unable to include this information within the invitation to purchase. Where this is the case, the trader should take steps to overcome these limitations and provide the consumer with the required pricing information by another means. However, the CMA does not provide examples of such scenarios, or the steps that could be taken.
Guidance on specific charges
Finally, the CMA identifies a range of specific types of charges and how they will be considered in relation to the principle of ‘total price’. This includes:
‘Per-transaction’ charges (e.g. administration or booking fees)
Delivery charges
Local charges and taxes (e.g. resort fees)
Periodic contracts (e.g. a 12-month gym membership or a subscription)
Most notably, while the cumulative cost of a fixed-term contract could be calculated in advance, the CMA has chosen to allow traders to advertise the monthly cost instead as the total price. While not stated in the guidance, this is likely to be because the monthly cost is the most relevant to consumers as this is the charge that they are required to pay each month.
International perspective: upcoming EU Digital Fairness Act
While this guidance is specific to the DMCCA in the UK, which diverges from the previous EU-harmonised consumer protection framework, there are nonetheless similar issues beginning to arise in the EU. In its Digital Fairness Fitness Check (DFFC), the European Commission identified drip pricing as a harmful practice that undermines price transparency and hinders informed consumer decisions. While the existing EU Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (UCPD) has been used to challenge drip pricing on grounds of misleading actions or omissions, the DFFC states that enforcement has been insufficient. To address these issues, the upcoming EU Digital Fairness Act aims to clarify the law on drip pricing. These legislative efforts seek to introduce new requirements to ensure unavoidable fees are either included in the headline price or indicated upfront in the case of online products.
What should video game companies do?
Given the significant emphasis on price transparency under the DMCCA, video game companies would be well advised to review their existing business models to determine the impact of the draft guidance. Likewise, they should revisit their marketing materials, advertisements, and websites, as they may need to be updated to accurately reflect the total price of advertised products.
As is always the case with guidance that applies to every sector and market, there is the potential for the needs and limitations of business models from a specific industry to be overlooked, leading to a lack of clarity or to unfeasible compliance requirements. Consultations on guidance are a vital part of the regulatory process, and we would encourage companies to consider whether they wish to submit a response.
How can Flux help me?
The consultation runs until the 8th of September and represents a valuable opportunity for video game companies to engage with the CMA and gain further clarity on consumer protection requirements. Given that the regulator can now impose penalties of up to 10% of global turnover, complying with consumer protection rules is increasingly a board-level concern for many businesses. If you’d like to talk to us about some advice on the proposed guidance, the consultation, or other consumer protection regulatory matters, we’re just a contact form away.
Author: Dr Celia Pontin, Director of Public Policy and Public Affairs