US users breath easy
PC gaming giant Valve has started to bow to the UK’s Online Safety Act, by requiring Steam users to verify their age with a credit card in order to access games with mature content.
“In order to access Steam store pages for mature content games as well as their associated community hubs, you need to be logged into an active user account and explicitly opt-in through the account settings page.” Steam’s Support page details. « For UK users, this opt-in process requires age verification. Your UK Steam user account is considered age verified for as long as a valid credit card is stored on the account.”
The Online Safety Act all stems from a goal to prevent children from seeing inappropriate, sexual or generally mature content across a myriad of online platforms and services. As such, users of services and sites that host mature content, even if not exclusively so, need to verify that they are 18 years of age or older.
Often this requires things like a facial scan or credit card details, which privacy-centric people might be concerned about parting with given verification tools can be delivered via third-party organizations with their own rules on data collection and use.
