Following the U.K’s Online Safety Act that was introduced earlier this year, the video game industry has also become one of the many sectors affected by the new laws.
In an attempt to make social media companies and other online services legally responsible for user safety, the brand-new Online Safety Act aims to protect users against age-inappropriate and harmful content and it seems as though the law has now made its way to Steam.
We already know that video games have come alongside age certificates since the beginning of time but bypassing this has always been quite simple too.
However, following the Online Safety Act, Steam users must now verify their age in order to access pages and games with mature content.
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Users can do this by providing credit card details which, in turn, will trigger a £0 transaction.
Considering that you have to be 18 to receive a credit card in the U.K., this is a simple way to enforce the new law.
"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," a statement by Valve reads.
As opposed to other sites, such as Discord, which require face verification or ID in order to access any mature content, Valve believes that this "preserves the maximum degree of user privacy".
"The data processed in the verification process is identical to that of the millions of other Steam users who make purchases or store their payment details for convenience," Valve continued.
"The verification process therefore provides no information about a user's content preferences to payment providers or other third parties."
As always, there is no doubt that the younger generation will find ways to bypass this new law but for now, you had better get your credit card ready if you want to access some more mature titles on Steam.