In July the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act came into effect, requiring that any form of online services feature age verification checks if these services contain content that could be deemed “harmful to children.” This law has affected a range of websites, including social media sites like X, as well as sites that contain adult, 18+ content, and even Xbox will require age verification in the UK come next year. Now, Valve has introduced its own age verification process that requires users in the UK to register a credit card to their account in order to view certain games.
As detailed on a new Steam support page titled Age Assurance Under the UK Online Safety Act, Valve explains, “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. 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.”
Valve says that it uses this process as Ofcom, the UK’s regulatory and competition authority, has said that credit card checks are very effective forms of age verification due to the fact you must be 18 to obtain one. GameSpot can also confirm that a UK debit card will not work in place of a credit card–in the UK children as young as 11 can get a debit card, which is likely why this is not offered as an option.
It’s also worth noting that the Steam support page doesn’t specify what constintutes a “mature” game–GameSpot can also confirm that games with violent and occasionally sexual content like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Kingdom Come Deliverence 2 are still viewable, as well as controversial titles like Postal 2. Games where sexual content is a main feature appears to differ from title to title.
Steam isn’t the only digital game storefront that has put restrictions in place regarding the Online Safety Act. Itch.io has made it so that affected pages will be entirely unavailable in the UK until it implements a third-party age verification process.
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