Update 29/08/25 - 16:59 UTC: since there's reports of it still working even with a Debit Card and not just a Credit Card (they're different in the UK), I've asked Valve if they have any comments on this. Since in the UK, even a preteen can get a Debit Card.
Update #2 - 19:33 UTC - Valve press replied to GamingOnLinux to confirm allowing Debit Cards for verification was a bug, which has now been solved.
Valve recently put up a new support page, detailing the steps they've taken to comply with the UK Online Safety Act.
The UK Online Safety Act has a rather broad scope, and has been the cause of many changes not just for UK citizens but people worldwide as more and more websites realise they're in scope of the act and have to make changes. It covers all sorts of thing from porn to community forums and more. And yes, that even includes video games too (which many developers likely aren't even aware of). If a video game has user to user communication (voice / text chat) and it's available in the UK, the developer will need to comply with it.
The likes of Reddit, Bluesky, Discord, Xbox and more have already rolled out verification systems.
To comply with it, Valve will now be requiring users from the UK to have a valid credit card stored on their account. Valve will do a direct check (that costs £0 to users) using their own internal payment processing system "which is independently certified under the PCI-DSS standard".
If you don't do this you won't be able to access "Steam store pages for mature content games as well as their associated community hubs".
In the UK, you have to be at least 18 to have a credit card, so this way does make a lot of sense - as you'll already be age verified if you have a credit card in your name. Valve additionally say that "Having the credit card stored as a payment method acts as an additional deterrent against circumventing age verification by sharing a single Steam user account among multiple persons".
Valve feel this way "preserves the maximum degree of user privacy" as the data they will process during this is no different to simply making a purchase on Steam. It's also only required if you've specifically opted into seeing mature content on Steam.
Source: Valve
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
About the author - Liam Dawe
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. You can also follow my personal adventures on Bluesky [External Link].
See more from me
See more from me
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
You can also find comments for this article on social media: All posts need to follow our rules. Please hit the Report Flag icon on any post that breaks the rules or contains illegal / harmful content. Readers can also email us for any issues or concerns.
This whole thing is one big mess. I hate that politicians, who have no idea what they are doing, put these in place without consulting with people who do know what they are doing. Glad I don't live in the UK. I swear, if I were one of these companies, I’d have just pulled out of doing business with the UK. If enough of them had, then the government would have had to fold and make significant changes or repeal it and find a better way to protect kids.
Wonder how long the UK government will keep this running. What happens if money becomes tight or the Tories take power again?
Wonder how long the UK government will keep this running. What happens if money becomes tight or the Tories take power again?
4 Likes
If no one obeys, no one commands. No one voted for this, no one asked us if we agreed. They will never have my credit card, I will play something else.
5 Likes
Wonder how long the UK government will keep this running. What happens if money becomes tight or the Tories take power again?
The law has been passed by the Torries.
4 Likes
TheRiddick a day ago
This is going to stop nobody.
Hell these days a lot of parents will give their kids a debit card with a tiny bit on money on it in case of an emergency or lunch money!
UK will probably ask for DNA verification next! Please wait while we decode your RNA strains... lol
Last edited by TheRiddick on 30 Aug 2025 at 2:05 am UTC
Hell these days a lot of parents will give their kids a debit card with a tiny bit on money on it in case of an emergency or lunch money!
UK will probably ask for DNA verification next! Please wait while we decode your RNA strains... lol
Last edited by TheRiddick on 30 Aug 2025 at 2:05 am UTC
5 Likes
Kimyrielle a day ago
The law has been passed by the Torries.
Yes. And the current not-Tory government had every chance on earth to let this law die in legislature. They didn't. The problem with the UK is that their last head of government who wasn't a complete idiot was named Winston Churchill.
4 Likes
Wonder how long the UK government will keep this running. What happens if money becomes tight or the Tories take power again?
The law has been passed by the Torries.
Ohh. Didn't know that.
0 Likes
The law has been passed by the Torries.
We can't vote but we can boycott.
3 Likes
I contacted Paypal about not being able to use their services to purchase games on Steam from my country of residence, which is not England.
They were very dishonest, refusing to tell me the truth and claiming that it was Steam who, according to them, had made the decision to no longer work with Paypal :) As if the people at Steam were masochists and wanted to harm their business !! Paypal is openly making fun of us...
The Steam people are telling the truth: A bank bought Paypal and has since declared war on Steam for questionable ethical reasons. I would like to know which bank we are talking about and especially if it has any connection with Microsoft, which tried unsuccessfully to buy Steam some time ago...
If they really wanted to comply with English law, why block payments in almost every country in the world ?
This makes no sense, and it's probably just another lie, or the people at PayPal are complete idiots who are doing stupid things without even realizing it... which I doubt !!
In my opinion, they know exactly what they are doing and are exerting pressure that is most likely illegal on Steam (at least in my country which is not England) for another reason that they do not want to reveal to us. Otherwise they wouldn't lie to us...
Since Paypal is preventing me from purchasing my games, I have decided to avoid using their services as much as possible while this situation continues. I have already cancelled standing order debits that I had previously set up with Paypal to pay for Netflix.
They were very dishonest, refusing to tell me the truth and claiming that it was Steam who, according to them, had made the decision to no longer work with Paypal :) As if the people at Steam were masochists and wanted to harm their business !! Paypal is openly making fun of us...
The Steam people are telling the truth: A bank bought Paypal and has since declared war on Steam for questionable ethical reasons. I would like to know which bank we are talking about and especially if it has any connection with Microsoft, which tried unsuccessfully to buy Steam some time ago...
If they really wanted to comply with English law, why block payments in almost every country in the world ?
This makes no sense, and it's probably just another lie, or the people at PayPal are complete idiots who are doing stupid things without even realizing it... which I doubt !!
In my opinion, they know exactly what they are doing and are exerting pressure that is most likely illegal on Steam (at least in my country which is not England) for another reason that they do not want to reveal to us. Otherwise they wouldn't lie to us...
Since Paypal is preventing me from purchasing my games, I have decided to avoid using their services as much as possible while this situation continues. I have already cancelled standing order debits that I had previously set up with Paypal to pay for Netflix.
3 Likes
LordDaveTheKind a day ago
I'm fine with that, although I agree that this is not the best solution ever.
Best one IMHO would be to have a 2FA Web app under the gov.uk domain. This could be then consumed as a standard by all the services and websites who sell mature content.
Best one IMHO would be to have a 2FA Web app under the gov.uk domain. This could be then consumed as a standard by all the services and websites who sell mature content.
1 Likes
hard to believe people are taking this laying down.. We truly live in Orwellian times.. because you People HAVE to know this law has squat to do with protecting your kids
5 Likes
I hate that politicians, who have no idea what they are doing, put these in place without consulting with people who do know what they are doing.Ofcom (who is responsible for the details) consulted on the implementation and then essentially did what they planned to anyway. I know, I consulted my own users, them wrote a 28-page response to one of their consultations on behalf of a site I run.
There is a bit of a get out in the legislation which states that (paraphrasing) expectations should be aligned with the capabilities of the service concerned. Still, many of the costed expectations for e.g. age-appropriate recommender systems for mixed-content services are unrealistic for community sites, and many other requirements appear non-negotiable. Their own expectation is that this will result in some "exiting the UK market".
2 Likes
JSVRamirez a day ago
hard to believe people are taking this laying down.. We truly live in Orwellian times.. because you People HAVE to know this law has squat to do with protecting your kids
It has everything to do with capitulating with the mass media who platform pressure groups (in this case, the fathers of children who died by suicide) in order to look "tough" against the social media companies, all the while actually screwing over the people and artists by siding with those same companies in absolutely everything else.
2 Likes
GustyGhost a day ago
The tragic part isn't even the immediate effects in the UK but that this sets a precedent for governments elsewhere that it can be done. Non-engagement with such a system should be seen as a duty by both vendors and by the people suffering under it.
1 Likes
It's not that they want to protect children, it's about that the UK that wants to know who the adults are. All parties in the UK are bad.
I remember a McCarthy claiming that downloading mp3 songs funds terrorism around the time that we were in Brussels protesting against software patents.
She wanted to have DPI to detect the downloading of mp3 songs.
The current "child protection" is exactly that, just they disguise it as a way to protect children.
I wonder how the UK would handle roblox? As that's a platform that can be harmful to children, unlike anything in the steam store.
I remember a McCarthy claiming that downloading mp3 songs funds terrorism around the time that we were in Brussels protesting against software patents.
She wanted to have DPI to detect the downloading of mp3 songs.
The current "child protection" is exactly that, just they disguise it as a way to protect children.
I wonder how the UK would handle roblox? As that's a platform that can be harmful to children, unlike anything in the steam store.
1 Likes
...A bank bought Paypal...No they haven't, Paypal is a publicly traded company.
It's not that they want to protect children, it's about that the UK that wants to know who the adults are. All parties in the UK are bad.If that was true then it would have far easier for the UK to simply ask their very own GRO since they already have a full register on every single UK citizen there. Not everything is a conspiracy, especially when one isn't needed...
Last edited by F.Ultra on 31 Aug 2025 at 2:02 am UTC
1 Likes
The problem with the UK is that their last head of government who wasn't a complete idiot was named Winston Churchill.That's a rather drastic misspelling of "Clement Attlee".
(Actually, I'm fairly ignorant of the postwar-but-pre-Thatcher British PMs; there could be some good ones. Thatcher and everyone since have sucked, and I know Attlee was good, but in between I'm not sure)
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 31 Aug 2025 at 7:11 am UTC
0 Likes
That information is the same as used as the age verification on vending machines selling cigarettes. It's a good way to verify age without sending official documents around to some 3rd party entities.
That said, having a young stepson, I found the parental controls pretty okay in steam.
Last edited by STiAT on 31 Aug 2025 at 11:56 am UTC
That said, having a young stepson, I found the parental controls pretty okay in steam.
Last edited by STiAT on 31 Aug 2025 at 11:56 am UTC
0 Likes
@ F.Ultra
That's exactly what the Steam employee told me.
I want to point out that buying 51% of a company's stock makes you its largest shareholder and sole decision-maker...
And as you can read below, PayPal Holdings Inc has indeed authorized a buyout plan (article published on February 4, 2025)
https://ch.zonebourse.com/cours/action/PAYPAL-HOLDINGS-INC-23377703/actualite/PayPal-Holdings-Inc-autorise-un-plan-de-rachat-48953097/ [External Link]
To read :
In early July 2025, PayPal stopped processing Steam purchases denominated in most global currencies. Officially, PayPal's bank acquirer shut off the flow of payments overnight. Unofficially, the decision comes amid a surge in payments platforms surrounding adult content, a pressure that has already led to massive game removals on Steam and itch.io. Valve insists that the currency issue is "just about money." It's hard to hear this without seeing the shadow of the censorship campaigns carried out in recent weeks.
https://www.gamekult.com/actualite/paypal-steam-et-la-tentation-de-censure-quand-l-argent-dicte-la-norme-de-coonsommation-3050865252.html [External Link]
Last edited by phil995511 on 31 Aug 2025 at 12:44 pm UTC
No they haven't, Paypal is a publicly traded company.That's exactly what the Steam employee told me.
I want to point out that buying 51% of a company's stock makes you its largest shareholder and sole decision-maker...
And as you can read below, PayPal Holdings Inc has indeed authorized a buyout plan (article published on February 4, 2025)
https://ch.zonebourse.com/cours/action/PAYPAL-HOLDINGS-INC-23377703/actualite/PayPal-Holdings-Inc-autorise-un-plan-de-rachat-48953097/ [External Link]
To read :
In early July 2025, PayPal stopped processing Steam purchases denominated in most global currencies. Officially, PayPal's bank acquirer shut off the flow of payments overnight. Unofficially, the decision comes amid a surge in payments platforms surrounding adult content, a pressure that has already led to massive game removals on Steam and itch.io. Valve insists that the currency issue is "just about money." It's hard to hear this without seeing the shadow of the censorship campaigns carried out in recent weeks.
https://www.gamekult.com/actualite/paypal-steam-et-la-tentation-de-censure-quand-l-argent-dicte-la-norme-de-coonsommation-3050865252.html [External Link]
Last edited by phil995511 on 31 Aug 2025 at 12:44 pm UTC
1 Likes
This hasn't reached my country yet, but I'm almost ready to pull the Internet plug. It's a shame of my Steam library. But my GOG library and my physical Playstation 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 collection is a nice alternative.
As for the online services as Steam, so long and thanks for the fish.
As for the online services as Steam, so long and thanks for the fish.
0 Likes
Patreon
PayPal
Why some games on Linux, SteamOS / Steam Deck have broken videos and what you can do
How to install Battle.net on Linux, SteamOS and Steam Deck for World of Warcraft and Starcraft