Video game industry believes EU Kids Act will drive small creators and old games into extinction

A new law aimed at protecting children could kill off old video games and threaten small developers, industry trade groups have warned. The EU Kids Act was unveiled by commission president Ursula von der Leyen last month as a chance to “give childhood back to our children” and put parents “in the driving seat”. It would require videogames to be catered to children by default with stringent requirements including an eight-hour nighttime lock-out, a ban on screenshots, and guardian supervision. Gamers wanting to play the full version of games would have to pass age verification checks to access features, like multi-player tournaments or mystery boxes. The European Commission is gathering feedback on the act with respondents quick to criticise the threat posed to videogame makers. Stop Killing Games, a campaign to protect videogames, has opposed the act. “This could turn the EU into a pariah state for videogames,” said Ross Scott, the consumer group’s founder. He reckons the regulation could spark a race to update games or deactivate them. MEPs have also joined in sounding the alarm bell. Proposed law could kill games If the law passed, developers would need to make a child mode version of games and gate the full games behind a verification step. “This is going to bury developers with compliance steps, and a whole lot of cost,” said Scott. Age verification with zero-knowledge proof (meaning developers cannot collect data) will likely be required. “In practice, providers would likely need to engage a third-party age assurance provider,” also said Lauro Fava, partner at law firm Pinsent Masons. The Commission's impact assessment claims that third-party age verification apps would reduce costs, but failed to provide estimates. Fava called it “strange” that these were missing, and thinks the commission “arguably downplayed” the cost of compliance. Gamer’s Voice, an advocacy group, asserted that small games would struggle to pay for age-verification and other compliance measures, likely to inlclude game redesigns. The Kids Act would outlaw features ‘increasing social comparison’ for minors, meaning functions like leaderboards and kill counts could be restricted. And while the cost to developers is not known, it is feared prices could increase for players. The wide scope of the draft law means community servers and hobbyist-developed games could be subjected to the new rules. Any game, new or old, would have to follow measures unless strictly offline in a physical format or built only for educational purposes. And since the rules would apply to games made or consumed in the EU, it is feared game makers could block access to their games on the bloc.