Are you from the UK and partial to risque adult Steam games, such as Amarillo’s Butt Slapper – the Dark Souls of Butt Slapping – or the timelessly iconic MILFs of Sunville? Bad! Naughty! GO DIRECTLY TO BED. Unless you have a valid credit card. Steam have begun rolling out a requirement for all UK-based users to verify their ages, if they wish to access store pages for games rated mature. According to reports, debit cards are acceptable too.
The regulation follows the passing of the UK’s Online Safety Act, which now requires a host of online platforms to impose age verification systems, so as to protect younger people from pornography (among other things). I will offer no further comment on the OSA at this stage – it’s after 2pm on Friday, which is far too late in the week to have Opinions – but I’m relieved to discover that I can still google images of donkey willies on a work PC. Eurogamer’s Ed Nightingale has a fuller write-up, if you’re interested.
Valve have a Steam blog up, which explains the process for age verification and the need for a credit card in particular.
“In the UK, Ofcom is the independent regulator for online safety. Ofcom’s guidance on the OSA states that one highly effective age assurance measure is credit card checks,” it reads. “This is because, in the UK, an individual must be at least 18 years of age to obtain a credit card, therefore credit card issuers are obliged to verify the age of an applicant before providing them with a credit card.
“Having the credit card stored as a payment method acts as an additional deterrent against circumventing age verification by sharing a single Steam user account among multiple persons,” the post continues.
According to the Redditors who spotted all this earlier today (ta, VGC), debit cards appear to be acceptable at least for the time being. Which is good, because I don’t have a credit card, and I’d sure hate to be unable to buy *googles random adult games again* “Ideology In Friction”? I didn’t know Althusser made a porno.
Valve have had a busy few months in terms of adult-rated controversy. As you’re hopefully very well aware, given that we wouldn’t shut up about it, they’ve changed Steam’s regulations to give banks and credit card networks a say on the definition of acceptable NSFW games. A bunch of games have been delisted as a consequence. In connection to all that, Paypal recently pulled support for Steam purchases in certain countries at the behest of one of their acquiring banks.
