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PayPalUpdate 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.
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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?The law has been passed by the Torries.
Gerarderloper 30 Aug 2025
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 Gerarderloper on 30 Aug 2025 at 2:05 am UTC
Kimyrielle 30 Aug 2025
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.
Wonder how long the UK government will keep this running. What happens if money becomes tight or the Tories take power again?Ohh. Didn't know that.
The law has been passed by the Torries.
The law has been passed by the Torries.We can't vote but we can boycott.
LordDaveTheKind 30 Aug 2025
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.
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".
JSVRamirez 30 Aug 2025
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 kidsIt 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.
GustyGhost 30 Aug 2025
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.
...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
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
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
As for the online services as Steam, so long and thanks for the fish.
They should start selling special 18+ versions of their steam wallet cards in shops.You could easily sell those underhandedly to minors. Sure, you could also give away your credit card information, but you'd be quite an idiot to do so.
That's exactly what the Steam employee told me.Well that Steam eployee lied to you then. Yes buying up 51% of the votes (not the stock, but the votes) gains you veto power at shareholder meetings but there have been no such bid made on Paypal and 80% of the votes are held by long term investors (read institutions) so you cannot get 51% by silently buying up stocks from the exchange either (aka the free float is less than 20%).
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)
When it comes to your link your AI translation translated it wrongly into French. That news item had nothing to do with authorizing any buyout plan (a board cannot even make such an authorization, what the board can do is give their recommendation for or against a buyout offer, also such a offer must have been made public before the board can make any recommendation and since there exists not such offer there also exists no recommendation).
No what that news item was about was the board launching a share buyback program worth $15bn.
Last edited by F.Ultra on 31 Aug 2025 at 9:04 pm UTC
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