The PC Valve game giant began to bow before the UK online security law, forcing steam users to check 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 poles, you must be connected to an active user account and optimally opt via the account settings page.” Steam’s assistance page details. “For British users, this opt-in process requires age verification. Your British user account Steam is considered the age checked as long as a valid credit card is stored on the account.”
The online security law all comes from a goal to prevent children from seeing inappropriate, sexual or generally mature content in a myriad of platforms and online services. As such, users of services and sites that house mature content, even if it does not do so exclusively, must verify that they are 18 or more.
Often, this requires things like a scan or credit card details, whether people focused on confidentiality could be concerned with separating from given verification tools can be delivered via third -party organizations with their own rules on the collection and use of data. In particular, a credit card is requested as in the United Kingdom, you must be 18 to ask for one.
“Having the credit card stored as a payment method acts as an additional means of deterrent against the bypass of age verification by sharing a single STEAM user account between several people,” noted Valve.
Although I understand the need for such verification and I hope that it will protect young people from some of the most unavailable content that can be found online if this is the case, as a 38-year vapor user, it is a minor discomfort and another obstacle to jump when connecting to the game platform on different PCs or devices.
It is also a little boring because there are still people who do not have credit cards; For example, I only had one that I really use last year.
Protect
For people like me who can be a little uncertain to put the details of the credit card, the valve process is to store the credit card as a payment method so that it does not use a third-party verification service excluding platform, which should mean that the details of your credit card are kept safe.
“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 more convenience,” said Valve. “The verification process therefore does not provide any information on a user’s content preferences to payment providers or other third parties.”
So it makes me feel a little more comfortable with the whole and should be a unique process. I have become so used to the ease of use of steam by making a secure payment to connect to you via the mobile application, so I hope that adaptation to the online security law will not erode this feeling of ease.
It will be interesting to see if other countries follow the example of the United Kingdom or if Valve decides to deploy such an verification for all users and a single counter to allow “sure” access to mature content. I guess time will tell us.
