We at Gamer’s Voice are always watching for new laws and regulations being put in place that would affect our game developers and companies. The EU Kids Act is just such a change that despite it being implemented within Europe it would force any company that has users in the EU to comply or face punishment. The measurements are far too heavy handed and would negatively affect games and services within the UK without any real evidence that the children it’s meant to protect would be any better off. We see this act as something that would make the internet and communities within fundamentally worse for very little gain. Please read this press release from Stop Killing the Internet and if you can add your signature to the petition to show your support.
EU Kids Act: Age checks become the entry ticket to the internet
Stop Killing The Internet responds to the Commission’s proposal
Today the European Commission presented its proposal for the EU Kids Act https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/eu-kids-act-restrict-social-media-platforms-access-children-eu. Presented as child protection, the regulation would make proof of age a condition for normal use of social media, video platforms, computer games, app stores and AI chatbots for every user in the EU. Stop Killing The Internet warns that this lays the foundation for an identity layer across the internet.
What the proposal means for users: Every user is treated as a minor by default. Social networks, video platforms, games, app stores, AI companions and general AI chatbots may only offer their normal service once a user has pased a digital age ID check. This applies with or without an account.
Existing accounts are at risk. Platforms must check all existing accounts within six months. Accounts whose holder’s age “cannot be established” must be disabled. ID checks run on the EU’s digital identity infrastructure. For account creation on social media and video platforms, providers must use exclusively an “EU age verification solution” based on electronic attestations under the EU digital identity rules. European Digital Identity Wallets are automatically recognised. Age checks move into the device. App stores must assess the age of their users, and operating systems are to pass users’ age signals on to online services.
Markéta Gregorová, MEP (Czech Pirate Party, Greens/EFA), says: “The Commission’s age verification app, although later hastily presented as only a demo, was cracked within hours of its launch. Forcing mandatory age verification and digital ID on everyone not only creates a surveillance system any authoritarian would be proud of, it also does nothing to protect children better. The natives of the online world will be the first to circumvent any bans, while all of us lose our anonymity, all for the benefit of Big Tech, which can keep its toxic algorithms unchanged and will get even more personal profiles of everyone.”
Paul Diegel, representative of the citizens’ initiative, says:
“Adults who cannot or will not prove their age lose accounts they have used for years. This is an age checkpoint in front of the entire internet. Once every service must know whether you are an adult, the infrastructure to know who you are is only one step away. Today it checks age. Tomorrow the same system can check anything else a government or a platform wants to know. The internet is our public space. Nobody has to show ID to walk into a park, a library or a town hall, and nobody should have to online.
This proposal by the European Commission must be seen as an assault on the free internet, and on gaming in particular. It shows absolutely no regard for video games as a cultural pursuit and imposes restrictions which raise serious proportionality concerns under the EU Charter, particularly the rights to freedom of expression and information, privacy and data protection.
Much of gaming happens on private servers and on a peer-to-peer basis, which will not be able to implement or pay for the enormous costs associated with the Kids Act. Small developers and providers of online services do not have the technical or financial infrastructure to handle what the Commission is asking. Historic games that are unable to comply with the new rules would be impossible to distribute online.
This means that much of gaming culture, and the historic works of music and art contained within them will be pushed into illegality or will simply disappear. To us, it seems as if the Commission wants to turn the EU into a digital colony of big US companies, where media is only accessed on large corproate platforms, hurting small EU-based companies, community run projects, and start-ups in the process.”
Sign now All EU citizens of voting age can sign through the European Commission’s official collection system: https://eci.ec.europa.eu/066/public
More information: https://www.stopkillingtheinternet.com About the initiative “Stop Killing The Internet” calls for binding legislation ensuring that digital identity and age verification systems for online services in the EU remain voluntary, privacy-preservi
ng and non-discriminatory. The campaign follows in the tradition of the “Stop Killing Games” initiative.
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