1. The proper way to do age verification is for the government of a nation to provide a service which other parties can use to verify that a person is old enough to access said content (so not 'is this person at least 18', but 'is this person old enough that they are allowed to access this type of content').

It is also really important that the government service is not used directly by the content provider but by the end user, so that the government does not know what the verification is being used for.

This could work something like this:

- government has a website which you can only access after registering and proving who you are (plenty common already for voting, taxes and whatnot)
- on that website you can generate a time-limited token which proves your age (or anything else for that matter)
- any website can validate that said token has been emitted by the government and is therefore valid, without a request to the government services

It is essentially asymmetric cryptography which is widely used and not that hard to implement.

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Got accepted in the play test a couple weeks back and was not impressed.

Some of the ideas look pretty fun and interesting, but after over 3h playing there was still none of that. Only slow, boring, resources gathering and survival which was about filling need bars every so often.

I really hope they work on the first impression/early game before releasing the demo. If your game is built around a core idea, don't make people grind for hours before experiencing it.

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Got in the beta and gave it a whirl. The art looks great, reminiscent of klei (don't starve, oxygen not included) and the game runs perfectly fine on desktop.

Aside from that, there is sadly not much to say after over 3h. The gameplay so far is not great about (slow paced and a lot of micro management) and the cool island-related features are either locked in the current build or further along.

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The game uses a modified source 1 engine (strata source). Source 1 is 20 years old. Linux support was slapped on 13 years ago and relies on opengl.

In my opinion, proton is the better technical choice with its modern proven vulkan-based rendering. The proton version might even outlast both the windows and the (theoretical) native linux version.

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I've been desperately waiting for gearbox to fix the mess they made with risk of rain 2. This might just be what I needed instead, will give it a whirl!

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You're aware that something along these lines is already in place?!?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECall [External Link]

Thank you for the link. I had never heard of it (I also do not own a car).

Not only is there no easy way to disable it, the system is also encumbered by patents allowing some patent troll to milk cash for free. Great design.

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Seems to be an unpopular opinion but - good riddance. I'm tired of this wild west era of the internet where any platform can have anything on it and not be held responsible. Sure, no implementation will be perfect, but why not make the haram stuff a bit more difficult to access, eh? If this is what it takes to expose a few less people to traumatizing or shocking content all willy-nilly.

Now, I too, feel that the implementation of these being left to the free market is a bad idea. I want a transparent trust-free ubiquitous social service (from the government) identifying people and confirming to platform holder whether I am qualified for the content (jurisdiction & age). I will not give my ID to Google or platform partners (who mess things up completely in case of smaller platforms).

Laws such as the UK's "children safety act" give too much power and too much data to the government. The problem with that is not necessarily what happen immediately but rather what could happen in the long run.

Let's say UK introduce some form of government controlled online ID and tracing system. Amongst other things, this system is to be enforced on crypto currencies trading. It makes sense to not let teens play with high risk (sometime borderline legal) investments after all.

Skip 5 years into the future. The economy isn't doing well, mass layoffs are happening and there is a lot of unrest. The majority party then has a genius idea: let's blame it all on crypto currencies being used to manipulate the market. They promote new laws making owning crypto wallets illegal. Luckily, with all the data collected in the past 5 years they can easily fine/jail/whatever all the traitors who abused the system.

Governments should not be seen as perfect entities always acting in the best interest of everyone. Don't get me wrong, they are necessary and for the most part a huge boon to our societies. But they have their flaws, as such people must be entitled enough privacy to guarantee their freedom.

I agree. But can we expect better if the privacy-minded people, when asked for their input on these policies, are simply yelling "nooo".

I would consider myself a privacy minded person so here is an alternative, barely fleshed out idea, just to prove that other approaches are possible:

Owning an internet connection now requires a licence, just like driving a car. Obtaining said licence requires passing a test about general knowledge (identify phishing mails, what's an ip, so on) and, most importantly, your responsibility as an adult when letting children use internet (and how to protect them).

The main difference with the current laws being passed is that, in this scenario, the government is only judging your ability to do something, not tracing everything you do with it.

The analogy with driving also works in reverse to show how absurd the new laws are. What if the government suddenly started requiring all vehicle be equipped with a gps module constantly streaming its position to the authorities because "it will protect the children". Also, the police must have a duplicate of your keys, in case they need to check you haven't abducted a kid on your way to groceries (certainly they will never lose them, nor will there be any abuse, ever).

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It's disheartening how many people are raising their pitchfork against the new nexus mod owners when, in this case, they're just bound by the many anti-freedom laws being enacted all around the world.

As Liam said himself, even GoL had to make changes to accommodate the ridiculously overreaching and vague new UK laws. Including nuking the forum out of existence.

If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at your government (or at yourself if you didn't vote the last time you could).

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Not a "backroom deal" but there could hardly be less information on the actual deal.

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Gave the demo a spin. The base concept is quite good and reminds me a bit of transistor's system (which is brilliant).

However the content currently available is pretty limited and I didn't find many interesting synergies. We'll see how it matures.

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