Parental consent is something that should be integrated into the gaming world, as there are games that little kids shouldn’t be able to get on their own. If there’s a title that is too disturbing or too inappropriate for a kid, they shouldn’t have the option of buying it themselves, and that is possible on Steam if they had their dad’s or mom’s credit card. Now, it seems like Parental Consent is coming to Steam as the General Data Protection Regulation laws are in effect, and they apply to certain things, like the storage of data.
Just keep in mind that this wasn’t 100% confirmed, so we don’t know for sure if parental consent is going to be a real thing on Steam, but considering how the GDPR laws work, this very well may be true. They guys over at PCGamesN said:
Steam users below the age of 16 could soon require parental permission in order to maintain full access to the platform. Changes to the JavaScript of the platform’s sign-up page were issued last night, with code referring to ‘parental consent dialog’ and ‘parental email’.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Well, it depends, but it is something that Valve doesn’t have any control over, so if it happens, it happens. It isn’t such a bad thing when you think about it, as anyone under 16 has to ask their parents for permission, which isn’t that impactful overall.
