You discover that the island nation of Kismabooty has enacted a new law...

[Zed Clampet]

As the owner of a AAA game company with no permanent employees (after closing down Ubisoft), you have to decide what to do about Kismabooty's new laws. This is an important market for your company, as 3 of the 5 total sales of your first game were purchased there. Your second game is getting ready to ship, but you would be running afoul of the new Kismabooty law which states that blue must be Pantone 19-4052 in honor of the Holy Loincloth that the prophet Bigolbooty wore when he slayed the two headed chameleon (which tried to become invisible by changing colors to match the Holy Loincloth, but only managed Pantone 801 c, ever since 19-4052 has been considered a sacred color).

Okay, you can ignore that if you want (I should have said that first ) The real situation is that there are various laws going into effect around the world that are impacting the entire world. UK has its Online Safety Act which is so far reaching that the PMs on this site had to be turned off. What's even worse, as far as compliance goes, is that many of the 50 US states have either enacted their own laws or are currently considering it. so currently the UK has 1 law people have to worry about while the US has 25.

We, regardless of where we live, may have to endure abiding by every single law no matter where it was enacted.

This is the way games work. If Australia declares that a game is too adult, the whole world gets to enjoy the edits, not just Australia. If the UK thinks PMs are dangerous, then the whole world stands to lose them. There are other alternatives to strict compliance, of course. After the first wave of US states started requiring age verification for adult sites, the sites simply blocked those states (Even sites that have adopted the age-verification method required by the UK are not available in the US since the laws dictate different things)

Just a few of the common problems with these laws:

1) Very serious privacy concerns. The adult industry is not overly trustworthy. But what if someone started an adult site and asked residents of the UK to enter their credit card number to verify their age? What if that site was just a scam? What if they asked for more info and stole identities. One thing to remember is that many people fall for cybersecurity scams no matter how ridiculous they seem.

2) In some cases the whole world has to live under your laws.

3) Pushing people into risky or even illegal behavior. We know this is a result of prohibition. As an example of risky behavior, just a few days after the UK law went into effect, already 70,000 residents had started using the dark web. 99 percent of the dark web is completely innocuous, but that doesn't include the part that has adult material.

4) VPNs. There are a lot of sites that are blocking people using VPNs, so there are two problems here. Legitimate VPN users are being hassled, and if they aren't then your age verification system is broken.

5) Cause an untenable compliance situation with businesses who have to juggle all the laws at once.

So what are your suggestions for how game developers, game sellers and others should handle this? Does it matter what type of product it is?

 

[Colif]

We, regardless of where we live, may have to endure abiding by every single law no matter where it was enacted.

This is a precedent no one should agree too. Other countries laws shouldn't have any effect outside their country

Australia is already going to become more of a pain for the world in December... and for me

https://www.esafety.gov.au/about-us/industry-regulation/social-media-age-restrictions

Someone needs to tell them NO

 

[Zed Clampet]

This is a precedent no one should agree too. Other countries laws shouldn't have any effect outside their country

Australia is already going to become more of a pain for the world in December... and for me

https://www.esafety.gov.au/about-us/industry-regulation/social-media-age-restrictions

Someone needs to tell them NO

I tried to watch a video on X the other day, and it wanted to verify my age. Sometimes I think if the people running these sites had been responsible-type people and put all this stuff in to begin with that we wouldn't be experiencing the age verification apocalypse that we are now. It's been 30 years since the Internet hit the general populace, and we're just now thinking, "Hey, maybe we shouldn't let children watch porn."

 

[Colif]

its just a backdoor to making us all show ID everywhere.
As if kids have to prove it, we have to prove we aren't kids.

 

[Zed Clampet]

its just a backdoor to making us all show ID everywhere.
As if kids have to prove it, we have to prove we aren't kids.

Seems like they are going to push facial recognition. I don't have a webcam and I can't be identified by these programs because either 1) I'm too beautiful or 2) My gigantic beard that covers almost my entire face.

"Got to be good looking cause he's so hard to see" --John Lennon

 

[Frindis]

My gigantic beard that covers almost my entire face.

 

[Colif]

Seems like they are going to push facial recognition. I don't have a webcam and I can't be identified by these programs because either 1) I'm too beautiful or 2) My gigantic beard that covers almost my entire face.

I don't have or want one.
In theory they could use my phone. I am not sure how they going to enforce it.
I probably need to get a digital ID. Our Govt introduced those a year ago but I just ignored it.

 

[Pifanjr]

I'd think you could use the IP address to determine whether a user is in a country where certain laws apply and apply restrictions only to those people, but I suspect companies are both too lazy to implement this system and too worried that they'll still be liable if users use a VPN to circumvent the restrictions.

 

[Zloth]

Heck, I've been on the other end of this. At one time (and maybe even now), putting blood into a video game made it M rated. Walmart (I think?) decided they did not want to sell M-rated games. We had a little era of "green blood" because only human blood counted or some such.

What to do about it depends on the game AND the timing. The law could show up after release, in which case I need to patch FAST. Expect an ugly hack. If I've got time, then maybe I can accommodate and maybe I can't. If I can't, well, probably ugly hack time again - though, if it's too ugly, I might have to flat out not sell.

The "internetness" is tricky, too. So I broke Kismabooty's (that's pronounced booTAY!) laws. Fine. The US has no extradition treaty with them. I'll just make a note not to visit. Though, if Poland does, GOG might not want to sell my game.

A law that would punish the game company even if they are not selling in that nation... that sounds like something else is going on. The censorship is likely just a cover for a nation that wants to burn game companies. Time to start talking to politicians about modifying extradition treaties and Steam about stopping sales. (Unless it's my own nation. That'd be serious trouble.)

 

[Zed Clampet]

Heck, I've been on the other end of this. At one time (and maybe even now), putting blood into a video game made it M rated. Walmart (I think?) decided they did not want to sell M-rated games. We had a little era of "green blood" because only human blood counted or some such.

What to do about it depends on the game AND the timing. The law could show up after release, in which case I need to patch FAST. Expect an ugly hack. If I've got time, then maybe I can accommodate and maybe I can't. If I can't, well, probably ugly hack time again - though, if it's too ugly, I might have to flat out not sell.

The "internetness" is tricky, too. So I broke Kismabooty's (that's pronounced booTAY!) laws. Fine. The US has no extradition treaty with them. I'll just make a note not to visit. Though, if Poland does, GOG might not want to sell my game.

A law that would punish the game company even if they are not selling in that nation... that sounds like something else is going on. The censorship is likely just a cover for a nation that wants to burn game companies. Time to start talking to politicians about modifying extradition treaties and Steam about stopping sales. (Unless it's my own nation. That'd be serious trouble.)

I actually just meant we would all have to follow their law in the sense that it was unlikely that the game developers would make a bunch of different versions, so we would all get the version made for the strictest country.