22 ms·

I'm fine with Epic getting financially reprimanded for dark patterns and anti-consumer behaviour. I am not on board with this: > That lawsuit also accused the

I'm fine with Epic getting financially reprimanded for dark patterns and anti-consumer behaviour. I am not on board with this: > That lawsuit also accused the company of illegally enabling real-time voice and text chat communications for children and teens in the game by default. So voice chat must now be turned off by default for all children across America? How on earth is this supposed to be policed? Should everyone playing a game be required to upload ID? And what is the gate between on and off by default? A single button press? This one doesn't make any sense to me. Voice chat is a staple of online games. Having a core feature included in a game by default is common sense.

jerrygenser 4y ago
Can it be off by default but the user can enable it manually? Does it say it's off unless age verified or just off by default?
BryantD 4y ago
If this is a COPPA issue, you just have to ask for birth year and you’re allowed to trust the answer.
- tyleo 4y ago
  Yeah, I don’t know what the big deal is with people in this thread saying, “bah, this is impossible” but I work on a COPPA compliant game and “chat off for kids by default” is absolutely a must.
  - dagmx 4y ago
    It’s because a lot of engineers get hung up in the “oh there’s so many ways to defeat this” mindset, and forget that perfect is the enemy of good. Sensible defaults are a good enough start and many regulations like this are based around best efforts , not absolute perfection.
    - BryantD 4y ago
      Yup. It’s both true that the age gate is easy to defeat and that it helps in practice.
    - robswc 4y ago
      It seems so pointless though. I was signing up for all sorts of things when I was a kid. Nothing bad by any stretch of the imagination but I knew when they asked "are you 13" you just click "yes" and you're good to go. Seems like a "feel good" solution that will collectively waste thousands of hours. I don't see why this is required, quite honestly.
      - dagmx 4y ago
        It is somewhat performative but it does save some percentage of children who are honest about it, and at the very least it lets you pass the buck to the user. Yeah it’s easily defeated but so is wearing seatbelts when you drive.
      - larksimian 4y ago
        There's also the fact that the kid who is enough of a dope(/trusting/rule and authority abiding) to not know he can lie on the form is also the most likely to be victimized by adults online. This is a similar selection effect to misspelled Nigerian prince emails, so I'd say it's a pretty good mechanism actually.
- breezeitall 4y ago
  If I have a F2P game on mobile, do I then have to force ask the users age at the start to track things like DAU without getting potentially sued because I was unintentionally without knowing tracking < 13 years?
  - BryantD 4y ago
    IANAL. However, my answer to that question would be “it’s a good idea.” COPPA specifically calls out collecting device identifiers and cookies as personal information. Here’s the money line: “It shall be unlawful for any operator of a Web site or online service directed to children, or any operator that has actual knowledge that it is collecting or maintaining personal information from a child, to collect personal information from a child in a manner that violates the regulations prescribed under this part.” Note “directed to children.” If your game isn’t directed to children, you’re fine, but that’s a terribly fuzzy definition. In practice I would recommend taking the safe road and age gating for games. Again, I am not a lawyer. Edit: I read the complaint and Epic was explicitly marketing to ages 10+, so this wasn’t at all fuzzy for them.
    - breezeitall 4y ago
      Thank you, that makes sense.
hourago 4y ago
> So voice chat must now be turned off by default for all children across America? Should everyone playing a game be required to upload ID? And what is the gate between on and off by default? A single button press? When you go to the shop to buy alcohol you need to show an id. So, adults are free to buy alcohol but not children. Why is this any different? I understand that the problem comes from the amount of chat abuse in on-line communities. It not just swearing but the constant harrasement as soon as someone is losing a match, or even if they are winning. I understand your concerns, but ignoring the chat problem paints a partial picture of the situation.
- stevehawk 4y ago
  what was "the chat problem" ?
  - Spivak 4y ago
    The fact that online gaming chat is really really toxic. It's one of those things where christian mothers were right about video games but wrong about why. It turns out that artificial violence and guns and sex aren't some big corrupting influence but hanging around assholes for the majority of your leisure time and social activity absolutely is. Online gaming where the only communication between players is jumping and canned voice lines is a wildly different experience.
    - mardifoufs 4y ago
      Or maybe this is exactly the same as those christian mothers, in the sense that it's "think of the children" hysteria from modern day puritans?
      - Spivak 4y ago
        Oh no, it's "this shit is bad for absolutely everyone regardless of age and in some cases worse for adults, particularly young men, but it's politically infeasible to do anything to stop it once people turn 18."
jsnell 4y ago
You ask the users for their date of birth on signup, don't tell them that it will be used for age-gating features (to avoid incentivizing lying), and don't allow the date to be changed without some kind of age verification. Or you use the social graph to infer age: somebody who mainly plays with 10 year olds is probably also about 10. If they claim to be 20, require an id anyway. Non-gaming companies deal with this all the time. It's annoying, but shouldn't require blazing any new trails.
- ApolloFortyNine 4y ago
  10 year olds aren't as dumb as you're assuming here, they'd either make a new account, or have already been been putting an 18+ birth date for years. All anyone cares about is covering their own ass, so it'd solve that issue, but it would have neglibile effect on anything real. Source: Used the internet when I had to lie to every site about being over 13, so lied to every site about being over 13. Also vrchat requires being 13+, and boy, does 'requiring' it not accomplish anything at all.
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    We all know this can be bypassed but it is still the strategy pursued by a lot of services where some or all content is not appropriate for kids.
  - TheBrokenRail 4y ago
    Yeah, Google thinks I'm 31 years older than I actually am.
  - PurpleRamen 4y ago
    It doesn't matter whether some will circumvent the age-gate. The company made an attempt, and enough kids are blocked by it, this is a good enough for the law, at the moment. But Epic is not willing to even walk this short way...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
josefx 4y ago
> How on earth is this supposed to be policed? Should everyone playing a game be required to upload ID? No need for a photo ID, Epic is also under fire for the amount of data it already collects from children. They are well aware who is playing. [1] [1] https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2022/12/record-setting-ftc-settlements-fortnite-owner-epic-games-are-latest-battle-royale-against-violations https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2022/12/record-se... > Voice chat is a staple of online games. Having a core feature included in a game by default is common sense. It is so common sense that many games have minute long sections where it is outright impossible to mute trolls because the controls for voice chat aren't always accessible. Quite sure Fallout 76 didn't have any controls for it at all when it came out. The only choice in that case is to mute sound permanently, which is fucking stupid. > Having a core feature included in a game by default is common sense. I rarely use voice chat and the build in one even less. Call me old fashioned but I often just use a team speak server when playing with friends - once it works, it works for all games.
_fat_santa 4y ago
Epic could add a dose of CYA here. Disable voice and text chat, and put the enable switch behind a "for 18+ only" or something like that and have them confirm their birthdate. Not that it would actually stop minors from bypassing this by clicking through the prompt and entering a fake age. But this would allow Epic to argue to the court that they are doing more than their competitors to verify that children are not using voice/text chat and that requiring them to go further would be unfair. * Not a lawyer
- TheBrokenRail 4y ago
  When we get into situations like this, you do have to question if the law requiring it is just plain silly.
  - Workaccount2 4y ago
    Thinking about it, I can't blame the FTC for requiring it even if it is laughably stupid. If their mandate is "Do the best you can", putting in some obstruction to kids voice chat is better than nothing. Even if it only prevents 0.00001 more kids from using voice chat, their mandate is to choose that over 0.
sillysaurusx 4y ago
Amazing how many people in this thread want to run to the government to solve the problem. It’s kind of like that musk thread from yesterday where a bunch of people showed up to defend the policy of banning links. If someone makes a rule, there will always be someone else who thinks it’s a good idea. As someone who grew up on roleplaying games when I was about 13, and had lots of exposure to the adult side of life, I’m with you. It’s totally lame that the government is trying to regulate this.
- ThisNameNotUsed 4y ago
  13 is nothing like 10, or 8. I have nephews playing on their own at 4.
  - 72deluxe 4y ago
    I do not have children but I could not imagine my parents leaving me with unfettered access to a TV at age 4. If the Internet had been around, they certainly wouldn't have given me an internet-enabled device and left me by myself. How is playing games online where you can communicate with random people across the world without any sort of parental supervision possibly a good idea?? And why is it someone else's problem? I don't mean this rudely, but how about actually doing some parenting? I used to work with a guy who said the schools should be doing more to make children behave better, as if he was somehow absolved of any input. Absolutely baffling.
    - otachack 4y ago
      I'm also not a parent or a teacher. And I try my best to not give parenting advice to actual parents. It helps to remember that life is complicated and there are limitless factors that can contribute to a family dynamic. Growing up my parents barely knew what the internet was and just associated it with "the computer". They attuned it as a "toy" and nothing serious. This allowed me unfiltered access to anything that was on the internet at the time. You'd hope today's parents are more knowledgeable but I bet the majority of parents are just trying to get by and aren't ramped up as to how everything works today. They may be pressured to go with the technological flow head first due to society without fully knowing or controlling everything. Anyways, back to my point, telling someone to "go parent right", especially as a non-parent, maybe you can approach it better.
tyleo 4y ago
I don’t know what the big deal is with people in this thread saying, “bah, this is impossible” but I work on a COPPA compliant game and “chat off for kids by default” is a standard or < 13 cannot play your game (my understanding, IANAL). https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/childrens-online-privacy-protection-rule-six-step-compliance-plan-your-business https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/childrens-on...
- zamadatix 4y ago
  How are you verifying age? The "this is impossible"s are about it being accurate on age not the disabling of chat once you have an accurate age. The point being the law is useless theatre that does nothing to prevent kids from using it but annoys everyone else anyways.
  - tyleo 4y ago
    Here is a link to our support site which provides more information: https://recroom.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4426900227735-What-is-a-Junior-Account- https://recroom.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4426900227735-...
    - zamadatix 4y ago
      Love Rec Room :) But this is basically the button press the GP was talking about, during sign up (which can be separate from the main sign up on the same device) the kid just says they were born in 1912 and now the mic works. Yes it's compliant with the law but it's the same problem GP was actually talking about - there is no real verification. Having parental controlled accounts is a nice feature in general though, regardless of the legal requirements. Ultimately things like this come down to making good parenting easier and that can help.
      - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
        I think the idea is that parents are supposed to create accounts on Epic and Steam, not children. The parent selects the correct age during account creation.
ThisNameNotUsed 4y ago
So just because perfect enforcement is not possible the law doesn’t make sense to you? Of the billions(maybe trillions) of interactions on this game this law prevents millions of stupid ones with small children. That’s more than enough of a reason for you to click one extra button. Boo boo. Google seat belt law statistics on a similar situation.
theptip 4y ago
It’s not uncommon for the OS to have an age lock these days (eg iOS) that parents can set, and kids can’t unset. Or, the parent can set the age in the console’s user profile and the system locks it. That seems to be a trivial solution to the problem here. In this case there is a small amount of work required of Epic to enable the law to be enforced in the ecosystem. Without that work to add profiles and enforce ages in the game, the OS/platform cannot enforce either. So it’s obviously moving things towards compliance to ding Epic here.
alex_sf 4y ago
I'm not super familiar with the details of the case, but I'm familiar with Fortnite since I play it with my son. We frequently find voice chat being turned back on at startup, despite us turning it off. Maybe that's what they are referring to, somewhat sloppily?
aaomidi 4y ago
Can they please turn it off by default for everyone? I shouldn’t have to go to the settings for every single game to find out if some random fucker is going to hear me crunching on chips.
alasdair_ 4y ago
It’s mostly down to who the game targets. If it’s clear that under 13 kids will be playing, then COPA rules apply. So if you are making a Lego game, you’ll need to comply, but if you are making “Murder Sex Drugs III” then you won’t.
- seattle_spring 4y ago
  > Murder Sex Drugs III I'd preorder that game in a heartbeat.
danudey 4y ago
Turn off voice chat by default for everyone. Let people opt-in to the toxicity that is online gaming. I played a lot of Destiny, and it doesn't (didn't?) have voice chat. No problem. I also played a lot of Overwatch, which has voice chat that I didn't use. No problem. When I wanted to queue up for ranked, I would join a group and we would turn on voice chat. Also no problem. I'm not sure why your position is "children should have to opt out of voice chat". Why not "adults have to opt in to voice chat"? After all, it's single button press?
- wccrawford 4y ago
  I didn't play Destiny, but Destiny 2 definitely has voice chat enabled by default.
toast0 4y ago
> So voice chat must now be turned off by default for all children across America? How on earth is this supposed to be policed? Should everyone playing a game be required to upload ID? And what is the gate between on and off by default? A single button press? I mean, if it's just turned off by default under the plain meaning of words... just turn it off for everyone by default, and if you want to listen to children calling you racial slurs, you can turn it on. No need to collect ages. Otherwise, I've never seen much more than asking for your birth year to determine age, so it only affects children who can't figure out how to lie about their age. A skill that I've seen develop in minutes within the right framework.
blueboo 4y ago
Voice chat has been a “staple” but it’s consistently a torrent of abuse in the most mainstream games for almost two decades now. God help you if your voice presents female. The game industry loves the mainstream ignorance on this issue. Epic conveniently omits the fact from parents giving their kids Fortnite bux that their 11 year old kid is directly talking with adults twice their age. Seems like there are lots of ways to confirm age, with various levels of sophistication and thoroughness. I think it’d be easy to improve on the status quo of a flat zero.
paxys 4y ago
What's wrong with keeping voice chat off by default? That is a sensible approach for everyone, not just kids.
- jasmer 4y ago
  Exactly. It's extremely intrusive to have some random fool listening in on my own household, when I may be unaware. People have no idea how technology works, even smart people. Default mic/camera etc. off - they can provided a nice little popup and have us turn it on. Because companies will always push boundaries and cross the line, we need legislation unfortunately and can only hope the legislators don't fuck it up.
  - robswc 4y ago
    This I can get behind... but I do always go to the options and turn on "push to talk." I don't like the idea of legislation requiring such a thing though.
    - jasmer 4y ago
      We need legislation because PM's pushed to profit by CEO's just cross the line far too often. It's hard to explain but when you see it, you understand. It's the game we create. We don't even need to point the finger, because usually it's not 'someone's fault' is just stuff that happens. Many of these decisions are made even without deliberation. It'd be nice to have 'best practices' oversight instead of lawyers but we're not that sophisticated yet. And we don't really have a way of contemplating 'scale' aka once companies reach a certain size, their impact is greater and we have to be more careful.
jasmer 4y ago
Huh? That's the easiest one of all - anything that is privacy invading should be off by default. Most of us are not super aware of what the hell is 'on and off' in this nutty world. It's exceedingly nuts to me that I would start doing something and all of a sudden random strangers could hear me or interact with me. Default off for everyone, probably by law. Anyone can just turn the default to be 'on' it's not a big deal.
freejazz 4y ago
So, you are against any laws relating to the internet and children?
bushbaba 4y ago
voice chat will simply move to 3rd party apps, Suchas discord.
kevingadd 4y ago
This is also an accessibility barrier for the blind. (To be fair, ADA regulations now require games to include text-to-speech and speech-to-text support for in-game chat to mitigate it.)
xboxnolifes 4y ago
Seems easy to comply by just applying it to everyone.

jerrygenser 4y ago

Can it be off by default but the user can enable it manually? Does it say it's off unless age verified or just off by default?

BryantD 4y ago

If this is a COPPA issue, you just have to ask for birth year and you’re allowed to trust the answer.

tyleo 4y ago
Yeah, I don’t know what the big deal is with people in this thread saying, “bah, this is impossible” but I work on a COPPA compliant game and “chat off for kids by default” is absolutely a must.
- dagmx 4y ago
  It’s because a lot of engineers get hung up in the “oh there’s so many ways to defeat this” mindset, and forget that perfect is the enemy of good. Sensible defaults are a good enough start and many regulations like this are based around best efforts , not absolute perfection.
  - BryantD 4y ago
    Yup. It’s both true that the age gate is easy to defeat and that it helps in practice.
  - robswc 4y ago
    It seems so pointless though. I was signing up for all sorts of things when I was a kid. Nothing bad by any stretch of the imagination but I knew when they asked "are you 13" you just click "yes" and you're good to go. Seems like a "feel good" solution that will collectively waste thousands of hours. I don't see why this is required, quite honestly.
    - dagmx 4y ago
      It is somewhat performative but it does save some percentage of children who are honest about it, and at the very least it lets you pass the buck to the user. Yeah it’s easily defeated but so is wearing seatbelts when you drive.
    - larksimian 4y ago
      There's also the fact that the kid who is enough of a dope(/trusting/rule and authority abiding) to not know he can lie on the form is also the most likely to be victimized by adults online. This is a similar selection effect to misspelled Nigerian prince emails, so I'd say it's a pretty good mechanism actually.
breezeitall 4y ago
If I have a F2P game on mobile, do I then have to force ask the users age at the start to track things like DAU without getting potentially sued because I was unintentionally without knowing tracking < 13 years?
- BryantD 4y ago
  IANAL. However, my answer to that question would be “it’s a good idea.” COPPA specifically calls out collecting device identifiers and cookies as personal information. Here’s the money line: “It shall be unlawful for any operator of a Web site or online service directed to children, or any operator that has actual knowledge that it is collecting or maintaining personal information from a child, to collect personal information from a child in a manner that violates the regulations prescribed under this part.” Note “directed to children.” If your game isn’t directed to children, you’re fine, but that’s a terribly fuzzy definition. In practice I would recommend taking the safe road and age gating for games. Again, I am not a lawyer. Edit: I read the complaint and Epic was explicitly marketing to ages 10+, so this wasn’t at all fuzzy for them.
  - breezeitall 4y ago
    Thank you, that makes sense.

hourago 4y ago

> So voice chat must now be turned off by default for all children across America? Should everyone playing a game be required to upload ID? And what is the gate between on and off by default? A single button press? When you go to the shop to buy alcohol you need to show an id. So, adults are free to buy alcohol but not children. Why is this any different? I understand that the problem comes from the amount of chat abuse in on-line communities. It not just swearing but the constant harrasement as soon as someone is losing a match, or even if they are winning. I understand your concerns, but ignoring the chat problem paints a partial picture of the situation.

stevehawk 4y ago
what was "the chat problem" ?
- Spivak 4y ago
  The fact that online gaming chat is really really toxic. It's one of those things where christian mothers were right about video games but wrong about why. It turns out that artificial violence and guns and sex aren't some big corrupting influence but hanging around assholes for the majority of your leisure time and social activity absolutely is. Online gaming where the only communication between players is jumping and canned voice lines is a wildly different experience.
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    Or maybe this is exactly the same as those christian mothers, in the sense that it's "think of the children" hysteria from modern day puritans?
    - Spivak 4y ago
      Oh no, it's "this shit is bad for absolutely everyone regardless of age and in some cases worse for adults, particularly young men, but it's politically infeasible to do anything to stop it once people turn 18."

jsnell 4y ago

You ask the users for their date of birth on signup, don't tell them that it will be used for age-gating features (to avoid incentivizing lying), and don't allow the date to be changed without some kind of age verification. Or you use the social graph to infer age: somebody who mainly plays with 10 year olds is probably also about 10. If they claim to be 20, require an id anyway. Non-gaming companies deal with this all the time. It's annoying, but shouldn't require blazing any new trails.

ApolloFortyNine 4y ago
10 year olds aren't as dumb as you're assuming here, they'd either make a new account, or have already been been putting an 18+ birth date for years. All anyone cares about is covering their own ass, so it'd solve that issue, but it would have neglibile effect on anything real. Source: Used the internet when I had to lie to every site about being over 13, so lied to every site about being over 13. Also vrchat requires being 13+, and boy, does 'requiring' it not accomplish anything at all.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  We all know this can be bypassed but it is still the strategy pursued by a lot of services where some or all content is not appropriate for kids.
- TheBrokenRail 4y ago
  Yeah, Google thinks I'm 31 years older than I actually am.
- PurpleRamen 4y ago
  It doesn't matter whether some will circumvent the age-gate. The company made an attempt, and enough kids are blocked by it, this is a good enough for the law, at the moment. But Epic is not willing to even walk this short way...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

josefx 4y ago

> How on earth is this supposed to be policed? Should everyone playing a game be required to upload ID? No need for a photo ID, Epic is also under fire for the amount of data it already collects from children. They are well aware who is playing. [1] [1] https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2022/12/record-setting-ftc-settlements-fortnite-owner-epic-games-are-latest-battle-royale-against-violations https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2022/12/record-se... > Voice chat is a staple of online games. Having a core feature included in a game by default is common sense. It is so common sense that many games have minute long sections where it is outright impossible to mute trolls because the controls for voice chat aren't always accessible. Quite sure Fallout 76 didn't have any controls for it at all when it came out. The only choice in that case is to mute sound permanently, which is fucking stupid. > Having a core feature included in a game by default is common sense. I rarely use voice chat and the build in one even less. Call me old fashioned but I often just use a team speak server when playing with friends - once it works, it works for all games.

_fat_santa 4y ago

Epic could add a dose of CYA here. Disable voice and text chat, and put the enable switch behind a "for 18+ only" or something like that and have them confirm their birthdate. Not that it would actually stop minors from bypassing this by clicking through the prompt and entering a fake age. But this would allow Epic to argue to the court that they are doing more than their competitors to verify that children are not using voice/text chat and that requiring them to go further would be unfair. * Not a lawyer

TheBrokenRail 4y ago
When we get into situations like this, you do have to question if the law requiring it is just plain silly.
- Workaccount2 4y ago
  Thinking about it, I can't blame the FTC for requiring it even if it is laughably stupid. If their mandate is "Do the best you can", putting in some obstruction to kids voice chat is better than nothing. Even if it only prevents 0.00001 more kids from using voice chat, their mandate is to choose that over 0.

sillysaurusx 4y ago

Amazing how many people in this thread want to run to the government to solve the problem. It’s kind of like that musk thread from yesterday where a bunch of people showed up to defend the policy of banning links. If someone makes a rule, there will always be someone else who thinks it’s a good idea. As someone who grew up on roleplaying games when I was about 13, and had lots of exposure to the adult side of life, I’m with you. It’s totally lame that the government is trying to regulate this.

ThisNameNotUsed 4y ago
13 is nothing like 10, or 8. I have nephews playing on their own at 4.
- 72deluxe 4y ago
  I do not have children but I could not imagine my parents leaving me with unfettered access to a TV at age 4. If the Internet had been around, they certainly wouldn't have given me an internet-enabled device and left me by myself. How is playing games online where you can communicate with random people across the world without any sort of parental supervision possibly a good idea?? And why is it someone else's problem? I don't mean this rudely, but how about actually doing some parenting? I used to work with a guy who said the schools should be doing more to make children behave better, as if he was somehow absolved of any input. Absolutely baffling.
  - otachack 4y ago
    I'm also not a parent or a teacher. And I try my best to not give parenting advice to actual parents. It helps to remember that life is complicated and there are limitless factors that can contribute to a family dynamic. Growing up my parents barely knew what the internet was and just associated it with "the computer". They attuned it as a "toy" and nothing serious. This allowed me unfiltered access to anything that was on the internet at the time. You'd hope today's parents are more knowledgeable but I bet the majority of parents are just trying to get by and aren't ramped up as to how everything works today. They may be pressured to go with the technological flow head first due to society without fully knowing or controlling everything. Anyways, back to my point, telling someone to "go parent right", especially as a non-parent, maybe you can approach it better.

tyleo 4y ago

I don’t know what the big deal is with people in this thread saying, “bah, this is impossible” but I work on a COPPA compliant game and “chat off for kids by default” is a standard or < 13 cannot play your game (my understanding, IANAL). https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/childrens-online-privacy-protection-rule-six-step-compliance-plan-your-business https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/childrens-on...

zamadatix 4y ago
How are you verifying age? The "this is impossible"s are about it being accurate on age not the disabling of chat once you have an accurate age. The point being the law is useless theatre that does nothing to prevent kids from using it but annoys everyone else anyways.
- tyleo 4y ago
  Here is a link to our support site which provides more information: https://recroom.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4426900227735-What-is-a-Junior-Account- https://recroom.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4426900227735-...
  - zamadatix 4y ago
    Love Rec Room :) But this is basically the button press the GP was talking about, during sign up (which can be separate from the main sign up on the same device) the kid just says they were born in 1912 and now the mic works. Yes it's compliant with the law but it's the same problem GP was actually talking about - there is no real verification. Having parental controlled accounts is a nice feature in general though, regardless of the legal requirements. Ultimately things like this come down to making good parenting easier and that can help.
    - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
      I think the idea is that parents are supposed to create accounts on Epic and Steam, not children. The parent selects the correct age during account creation.

ThisNameNotUsed 4y ago

So just because perfect enforcement is not possible the law doesn’t make sense to you? Of the billions(maybe trillions) of interactions on this game this law prevents millions of stupid ones with small children. That’s more than enough of a reason for you to click one extra button. Boo boo. Google seat belt law statistics on a similar situation.

theptip 4y ago

It’s not uncommon for the OS to have an age lock these days (eg iOS) that parents can set, and kids can’t unset. Or, the parent can set the age in the console’s user profile and the system locks it. That seems to be a trivial solution to the problem here. In this case there is a small amount of work required of Epic to enable the law to be enforced in the ecosystem. Without that work to add profiles and enforce ages in the game, the OS/platform cannot enforce either. So it’s obviously moving things towards compliance to ding Epic here.

alex_sf 4y ago

I'm not super familiar with the details of the case, but I'm familiar with Fortnite since I play it with my son. We frequently find voice chat being turned back on at startup, despite us turning it off. Maybe that's what they are referring to, somewhat sloppily?

aaomidi 4y ago

Can they please turn it off by default for everyone? I shouldn’t have to go to the settings for every single game to find out if some random fucker is going to hear me crunching on chips.

alasdair_ 4y ago

It’s mostly down to who the game targets. If it’s clear that under 13 kids will be playing, then COPA rules apply. So if you are making a Lego game, you’ll need to comply, but if you are making “Murder Sex Drugs III” then you won’t.

seattle_spring 4y ago
> Murder Sex Drugs III I'd preorder that game in a heartbeat.

danudey 4y ago

Turn off voice chat by default for everyone. Let people opt-in to the toxicity that is online gaming. I played a lot of Destiny, and it doesn't (didn't?) have voice chat. No problem. I also played a lot of Overwatch, which has voice chat that I didn't use. No problem. When I wanted to queue up for ranked, I would join a group and we would turn on voice chat. Also no problem. I'm not sure why your position is "children should have to opt out of voice chat". Why not "adults have to opt in to voice chat"? After all, it's single button press?

wccrawford 4y ago
I didn't play Destiny, but Destiny 2 definitely has voice chat enabled by default.

toast0 4y ago

> So voice chat must now be turned off by default for all children across America? How on earth is this supposed to be policed? Should everyone playing a game be required to upload ID? And what is the gate between on and off by default? A single button press? I mean, if it's just turned off by default under the plain meaning of words... just turn it off for everyone by default, and if you want to listen to children calling you racial slurs, you can turn it on. No need to collect ages. Otherwise, I've never seen much more than asking for your birth year to determine age, so it only affects children who can't figure out how to lie about their age. A skill that I've seen develop in minutes within the right framework.

blueboo 4y ago

Voice chat has been a “staple” but it’s consistently a torrent of abuse in the most mainstream games for almost two decades now. God help you if your voice presents female. The game industry loves the mainstream ignorance on this issue. Epic conveniently omits the fact from parents giving their kids Fortnite bux that their 11 year old kid is directly talking with adults twice their age. Seems like there are lots of ways to confirm age, with various levels of sophistication and thoroughness. I think it’d be easy to improve on the status quo of a flat zero.

paxys 4y ago

What's wrong with keeping voice chat off by default? That is a sensible approach for everyone, not just kids.

jasmer 4y ago
Exactly. It's extremely intrusive to have some random fool listening in on my own household, when I may be unaware. People have no idea how technology works, even smart people. Default mic/camera etc. off - they can provided a nice little popup and have us turn it on. Because companies will always push boundaries and cross the line, we need legislation unfortunately and can only hope the legislators don't fuck it up.
- robswc 4y ago
  This I can get behind... but I do always go to the options and turn on "push to talk." I don't like the idea of legislation requiring such a thing though.
  - jasmer 4y ago
    We need legislation because PM's pushed to profit by CEO's just cross the line far too often. It's hard to explain but when you see it, you understand. It's the game we create. We don't even need to point the finger, because usually it's not 'someone's fault' is just stuff that happens. Many of these decisions are made even without deliberation. It'd be nice to have 'best practices' oversight instead of lawyers but we're not that sophisticated yet. And we don't really have a way of contemplating 'scale' aka once companies reach a certain size, their impact is greater and we have to be more careful.

jasmer 4y ago

Huh? That's the easiest one of all - anything that is privacy invading should be off by default. Most of us are not super aware of what the hell is 'on and off' in this nutty world. It's exceedingly nuts to me that I would start doing something and all of a sudden random strangers could hear me or interact with me. Default off for everyone, probably by law. Anyone can just turn the default to be 'on' it's not a big deal.

freejazz 4y ago

So, you are against any laws relating to the internet and children?

bushbaba 4y ago

voice chat will simply move to 3rd party apps, Suchas discord.

kevingadd 4y ago

This is also an accessibility barrier for the blind. (To be fair, ADA regulations now require games to include text-to-speech and speech-to-text support for in-game chat to mitigate it.)

xboxnolifes 4y ago

Seems easy to comply by just applying it to everyone.