What is it with Germany and Australia always being so anal about video games?
Australia had a bit of an old fart classification board. It’s gotten a lot better in recent years, especially after the R18 rating was introduced. It was pretty dumb for a while though I agree.
There was a lot of panic about “killer games” in the 90s-00s. Politicians and parents blamed video games for school shootings. Nowadays nobody cares about the topic at all, but the strict rules remain. Steam just kind of ignored the local laws so far, but now decided to actually adhere to them.
Fucking assholes at it again ruining fun because “CHILDREN CHILDREN” while they actually just want to opress.
Its gladly not that hard to get a rating, the agency just gives you a form you need to fill, hope everyone does that.
I have questions about how an age rating system would even necessarily be enforced even with rated games with a non-family account. It’s not like steam knows the difference between a teenager and an adult who makes any account. You can literally just buy steam gift cards and pay for games without even needing a credit card or PayPal account.
The age rating doesn’t do anything but assuage a groups fears and make the legislators look like they’ve achieved something for the public.
Germany for example has an ID with digital functions that are able to transmit if the holder of the ID is an adult or not completely anonymously but Steam refuses to implement a proper age verification system.
Damn, this might make some smaller very niche games unavailable here in germany. There are some games that already are (Fear & Hunger for example).
Article does mention that it’s just a little steam questionaire, but if germany doesn’t like it, it won’t be available anyway (would alternatively require an USK rating I think, which to my knowledge is much harder to get, and even then it might not be guaranteed).
Yeah, I’d prefer, if the law said that it needs to be sold only to adults. Making it completely unavailable, because no one has decided at what age kids can play it, is really non-sensical.
So I will have to buy the games on GreenManGaming etc. Oh no.
Anyways…
That depends… many games blocked in Germany on Steam also can’t be activated in Germany.
Really? Have never encountered that. But even if, that’s what vpns are for. And since steam isn’t losing any money that way they probably don’t care about it either.
What the fuck is wrong with krauts?
I don’t understand why they don’t use an age verification provider like PostIdent for 18+ titles
How do you know the title is 18+ if you dont have an age rating
More stupidly, my account is already 19 years old at this point.
What else should it be, 99+?
I think you misunderstand their point. PostIdent would only be useful AFTER someone took the time to rate the game. Steam does not require any official content/maturity rating in their store, just some subjective content descriptors. To do so would pass an additional cost onto developers. The US-based ESRB process, for example, can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to rate a title.
Further to your point, I try to limit the number of times I provide my personal ID online. It’s one thing when you show your ID at a bar and the bartender gives it back to you after a glance. It’s another when I’m sending a photocopy over the internet and trusting a remote, distant party to use the data once and discard it. Even worse if they save it for future use and risk leaking it later.
German ID (ePerso) can transmit your age anonymously.
