I don't understand how the age verification thing is spreading so fast. It's all over the world now and I barely heard about it before last year.
this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2026
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Its insane, and the worst part is I don't know what we can even do about it. There is no conversation, all the media basically talks about how great this is to protect kids, there doesn't seem to be any way to push back against this. Why the fuck should we be expected to provide anything to these companies - it's infuriating.
Eh. It just makes it easier to find targets when people finally decide enough is enough.
You can only push people so much before they start pushing back.
There are many powerful interests that want this for a variety of reasons, none of them good. When progress began being made, they all independently see it as building momentum so they try to capitalize on the opportunity. That's why there was a little noise at first, and now they're all suddenly crawling out of the woodwork. I'm sure there's some explicit coordination too, where favors are being exchanged and leverage is being used, since they identified that a rising tide raises all ships, and so the interests will cooperate and make deals as any wins serve them all and contribute the historic momentum.
They want to force this shit through quickly, and give the impression that it's inevitable and well-justified to quell public opposition and awareness.
People feel helpless against it, and there's little oppositional organizing. For being so loud of a move, it's remarkably quiet... Not sure if that's just media and narrative control, or if the world is so fucked that it can't get much traction on the public consciousness right now.
The world is run by a handful of powerful families that are mostly in agreement with each other on how to rule.
They keep saying this is to keep kids safe online but when I’m teaching my kid about internet safety one of the most important points is to not share personal information.
All parents have the kit to stop their kids from getting to porn, they’re just not using it.
Piracy and offline gaming has never looked so appealing.
That's the first step, the next step is marking LGBT+ content only for adults. They can't ban it yet so they will find another way.
Piracy is going to skyrocket with all of this age verification nonsense.
Unfortunately pirating online games isn't really a thing. Though there are few online ganes worth playing nowadays
For those who don't know, you can play pirated games online if the game supports LAN connectivity.
Use something like Haguichi for Linux or Hamachi for Windows to create a virtual LAN that allows you to play with friends over the internet.
That...is definitely an opinion
If you implement a weak age verification method, there will be a tonn of kids with fake IDs. If you implement a way to strong age verification method, you will get much less customers since not every adult will want to share his personal info to play a game.
Here’s hoping the age of my steam account helps me ignore a bunch of this bullshit, otherwise I’m going to have to get creative.
My Steam account is 20 years old, when Germany decided to force mandatory age verification for sexual content (games with extreme violence are fine ofc), Steam just prevented everyone from buying adult games. I can't even see the games with my account.
The kids are saved 🎉🎉
Ok, guess they don’t want my money then.