Quoting: Klaas

Quoting: Geek_ChrisSarcasm aside it would be a logistical and costly nightmare, not to mention a potential GPDR nightmare if a data breach ever happens so thanks but no thanks

Postident would be a possibility that involves an external party, so the logistics are already in place and have been for many years. If the choice is having to fake a trip abroad (which is against the rules and might get your account locked) it might be preferable than not being able to buy things.

I still think Postident shouldn't be even necessary. Every voucher you buy gets activated by the cashier when you buy it. The system that transfers the activation info can do a lot more, like sending back form data of all kinds. There's a standardized system behind it that does all kinds of things from simple activation over choosing options to complete id transmission for things like smart simcards.
Valve could clearly use that system to bind an optional age verification. Or they sell dedicated 18+ cards, nothing really special about it. So if you want to play some gore shooter, you go buy a 5€ voucher, tell the clerk you want to verify your age, he will check your age and press a button. Valve would know nothing new about you, other then your age >18...

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Quoting: thykrAnother ridiculous law made by pathetic tyrants. When will we stop these clowns I wonder?

No, just no. Limiting access to violent games to adults is very very old and pretty undisputed law here in Germany, predating digital stores like Steam by decades. Digital stores used loopholes to not comply and it's a joke these loopholes are only now closed.
There are thousands of online stores that already comply and it's up to them to decide how to implement it. As they already sell vouchers in stores, there's not even a need to send private information over the net. Buying a voucher could be implemented as a verification system, equivalent to buying booze or cigarettes.

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Quoting: Klaas

Quoting: constAs I switch locations quite often and have some dedicated devices for specific jobs, repairing these issues cost me days in the last years.

I've run into the issue several times, but so far it could always be fixed with a quick pacman -S archlinux-keyring

Did you try that?

Sure, it's always the first thing to try, but sometimes even that failed. There are similar commands to try after that and at some point you might actually need to force things manually...
There were also updates where arch had already partly updated and then failed on some critical package because of an outdated keyring, but I think that has been fixed in pacman for a while now.
I also still have some machines with manjaro in play that I haven't bothered switching, yet and there you have to bother with multiple keyrings.

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Quoting: LoudTechie...

It's not like there is no way to do it privacy friendly. Valve gift cards are sold in nearly every super market and tobacco shop here. They are usually located directly next to products that already require age validation or even full identification to purchase (like sim cards). I assume it would be possible for them to bind the purchase of one tier of these cards to an age verification at the counter (the cash register would even trigger a small alarm for necessary age validation). That would hardly be considered privacy invading here.

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Quoting: Deleted_UserAbsolut overkill by Steam (or the legislator). It would be still less disruptive if they asume an age restriction of 18, which would be the harshest possible restriction.

Obvious solution. Age verification is nothing magical and for a shop the size of Steam it's obviously worth the implementation cost. In Germany, we are used to authenticating against our ID card (which every adult must have), our banking cards or 3rd party authentication services like Postident to register to streaming services or buy alcohol/tobacco/vapes/adult content/knifes/whatever on the net. As Steam is completely account based, they could bind a single validation against the account and be done for.

When I was a child, things were a lot more restrictive then they are now, especially regarding video game content. Digital distribution broke through our laws that were made assuming video games are sold as physical items and only now things start to catch up a little.
There is broad consensus here that children should not get access to violent computer games unless parents decide to allow it. If parents want to allow it, they are free to do so, but if they don't want to allow it, it's not considered their job to invade their kids privacy..

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Quoting: Liam DaweArticle updated to clarify, nothing to do with any anti-cheat stuff folks.

Still a great project. The whole PGP keychain stuff can really byte you if start up an arch based device after a long time and try to update. As I switch locations quite often and have some dedicated devices for specific jobs, repairing these issues cost me days in the last years.

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Quoting: MrDerby

Quoting: scaineIf we're being optimistic about that secure signing piece targeting better anti-cheat, I'd suggest that Valve are looking to out-perform Windows in that regard, and turn SteamOS into THE trusted way to prevent cheating on any given game. Make it as trusted as a console, or more so if possible.

^^^^^ THIS! 10000%

We should hope they implement it in a way more distributions then SteamOS will profit.

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Quoting: GuestHow anti-cheat relates to that?

To really secure system integrity, there needs to be a full validation chain up to the kernel (and potentially beyond). Without that validation, game devs may continue to distrust anticheat tools on Linux. We don't yet know the new API MS announced to integrate in Windows, but it's really certain Linux will not be able to provide an equivalent unless the kernel and core libraries are build and signed by a trusted entity. Wouldn't make much sense to use that APi if the user can use a patched kernel. As SteamOS uses Archs kernel images and libraries, that must be done in Archs build system, hence the speculation this is related.

To be frank, I think we will see a major shift in cheating and anti-cheat in the coming years, it will be a battle of "AIs".

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Unitys Linux build system is out of beta for a very long time now. Game devs should be able to expect that as long as they don't write platform specific code themselves and choose compatible middleware, there should be minimal hassle. That's not how it works and the fault lies mainly with Unity. There should be no need to hire an expert, pay extra to get the source code of the engine and debug it into it's subsystems to grasp why it's faulting out and find a workaround. Finding why it's mildly misbehaving is even nastier. But that's the state it's in. You can blame it on the devs for trusting Unity, but same can be said about people who are really into "native" Linux games. No game dev will fix the damn engine, you know what to expect.

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Quoting: PublicNuisance

Quoting: soulsourceWithout knowing anything about the game:
Let me guess, Unreal Engine?

Unity from what I could find.

Then, sorry, but I can understand them. Supporting Unity linux builds is a nightmare to no gain.
However, they could still provide an old Linux build as beta for those who are stubborn about "native" builds.

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