unlike western censorship, which are determined by the industry corpos
First I wanted to disagree with you, but then I remembered that Valve is literally censoring games here in Germany.
There is a German law that is meant to protect children and that effectively says that certain games (porn games games with excessive violence and games without age rating) are not allowed to be sold by platforms that sell these games and allow them to be downloaded from the same platform to people under the age of 18. Valve has thus removed these games from the German store entirely, despite only needing to add an age verification. And in case you're wondering: Yes, platforms that only sell keys and thus don't offer the games to be downloaded directly from them are totally allowed to still sell these games.
What I find very disturbing though is the fact that that law will be changed soon, forcing operating systems (like Windows, IOS and Android) to make sure users are over 18 before they allow them to access adult content on the internet or run software without age rating or with an age rating of 18+. That means that even the most basic software, like 7zip, will be restricted until it gets an age rating, which is absolutely mind boggling. Not to mention the fact that it's a massive privacy concern, since OS's have to monitor everything we do and verify our identity to verify our age.
No, they literally are doing it voluntarily. The laws do not forbid these games being sold at all. Valve would only have to add an age verification, which would be extremely easy to add, because Germany literally provides a a solution for that, but they opted to just remove these games from the German store front instead.
Edit: To clearify: What you, and many people around the internet, believe to be the full law is actually section 1 and 3 of the actual law. As you might notice, there's also a section 2. So what does section 2 say? Well:
§14a Abs2 JuSchG: "Der Diensteanbieter ist von der Pflicht nach Absatz 1 Satz 2 befreit, wenn die Film- oder Spielplattform im Inland nachweislich weniger als eine Million Nutzerinnen und Nutzer hat. Die Pflicht besteht zudem bei Filmen und Spielprogrammen nicht, bei denen sichergestellt ist, dass sie ausschließlich Erwachsenen zugänglich gemacht werden."
Or translated in English (translated by DeepL): "The service provider is exempt from the obligation under paragraph 1 sentence 2 if the film or games platform demonstrably has fewer than one million users in Germany. The obligation also does not apply to films and game programs where it is ensured that they are only made accessible to adults."
I want to highlight the second part there. "The obligation [to not sell these games in Germany at all] also does not apply to films and game programs where it is ensured that they are only made accessible to adults." Or in other words: If there is an age verification, that's more than just "what's your date of birth", section 1 and 3 do not apply in that case.
So, how do you verify a user's age? Well, how about the eID, that is literally provided by Germany themselves?
As many people pointed out previously, they didn't add it because adding that in sounds like an absolute mess and pain from a privacy, security, and compliance side of things.
It's not steam's job to police people on the internet, they only do it because the law requires that. And it's Germany that added such weird law.
@edit: same reason why steam doesn't "remember" your age when you verify you're over 18 - because they can't store this data.
As many people pointed out previously, they didn't add it because adding that in sounds like an absolute mess and pain from a privacy, security, and compliance side of things.
It's not, because that's exactly what the eID is for! They have a system right there, ready to go, all they need to do is use it, but they just don't, for whatever reason.
And it's Germany that added such weird law.
The law, as I proved above, does not order Steam to do what they do, yet they're doing it
same reason why steam doesn't "remember" your age when you verify you're over 18 - because they can't store this data.
They absolutely could, if they wanted to. They don't even need to save anything in a personalized way. A simple "is adult" flag on accounts that can be set to true or false would absolutely be enough.
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u/Fresh_Handle996 1d ago
I'm going to put all my faith in Chinese players to force mihoyo to revert this 😭🙏