No "Adult Only"-Games for Germany

[Herr Grinch]

What's the reason, that i can't buy and play adult only games in Germany?

I'm an adult person and are not allowed to make my own decisions what i want to buy and play?
I am neither incapacitated nor mentally deranged or otherwise in need of guardianship.

What's wrong with you?

[Count_Dandyman]

Valve aren't the ones making the rules that are keeping you from buying those games they are simply following instructions put in place by your government.

[Nx Machina]

Read: https://www.theouterhaven.net/2020/12/steam-region-blocks-adult-only-games-in-germany/

[Nuuk]

"I'm an adult person" then you know.

[Falsus Te Deum]

OP you could read the discussion that has been going for almost a year about this if you like:
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/1753525962484005680/?ctp=3

It's not something new. It's about German law's, no more, no less.

[rawWwRrr]

Originally posted by Herr Grinch:

What's the reason, that i can't buy and play adult only games in Germany

YOUR country instituted new laws at the beginning of the year that add stricter ID requirements to purchasing adult oriented video games.

[Muppet among Puppets]

A newspaper gave away free games. They used a proper age verification that you can do at post office one time. So you have a virtual age verified post box on a site afterwards, and you could click a link to verify your age in it.


For a free game.

Now steam on the other hand.......

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Another topic on this...

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/5544461758367362223/

[Luzilyo]

yeah, germany is complete ♥♥♥♥ when it comes to censorship. i'll get the ♥♥♥♥ outta here as soon as i can, and i'd advise anyone else who gets too annoyed by stupid censorship bs to do the same. like, i can't even buy unreal anthology on steam. i can buy it on cd though. da fuq?

nah, but srsly, i think it's not just germanys fault. sure, our government often goes to ridiculously extreme lenghts with their "but think of the children!!!" crap, but in this specific situation valve has equal blame. can't tell me that with all the millions of dollars they're making they still don't have enough money to update their process for age verification. for now i guess the only choice you have is to buy your adult games from other places. amazon (if it's available on cd), patreon might also give you good results, and you can probably also find some other sites that sell such games for the german market.

[Muppet among Puppets]

Originally posted by Count_Dandyman:

Valve aren't the ones making the rules that are keeping you from buying those games they are simply following instructions put in place by your government.

There are rules that let people buy games. Steam does not follow them.

[Count_Dandyman]

Originally posted by Muppet among Puppets:

Originally posted by Count_Dandyman:

Valve aren't the ones making the rules that are keeping you from buying those games they are simply following instructions put in place by your government.

There are rules that let people buy games. Steam does not follow them.

Kind of tricky to follow those online in a way that can't easily be spoofed and bypassed without violating GDPR or making use of security tech beyond what anyone uses now.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

You can manually put games on your wishlist using this: http://theemu.freecluster.eu/steam_wishlist_ignore_adder.html?i=1

Do note, do not add more than 50 at a time. Steam will ip ban you for a few hours.

You can see if that workaround will work by adding them, browse your list and click add to cart.

[Muppet among Puppets]

Originally posted by Count_Dandyman:

Originally posted by Muppet among Puppets:

There are rules that let people buy games. Steam does not follow them.

Kind of tricky to follow those online in a way that can't easily be spoofed and bypassed without violating GDPR or making use of security tech beyond what anyone uses now.

Its as easy as write an email to an age verified email box, and the user clicking a verify link.
The post office has such a service.

Simple, isnt it?

[Count_Dandyman]

Originally posted by Muppet among Puppets:

Originally posted by Count_Dandyman:

Kind of tricky to follow those online in a way that can't easily be spoofed and bypassed without violating GDPR or making use of security tech beyond what anyone uses now.

Its as easy as write an email to an age verified email box, and the user clicking a verify link.
The post office has such a service.

Simple, isnt it?

How does that prevent younger people being the one using it and clicking verify?

How will Steam know that e-mail does belong to that account?

Why do you expect a foreign company that runs a store for luxury goods to be granted the same permissions and allowances on accessing and keeping personal data as a local company that is considered to be running an essential service?

[Luzilyo]

the way i see it, what really causes the problem is the fact that valve doesn't get any benefit for complying with german rules here. it's only the german market, which is already a pretty small one compared to usa, china, etc. and it's only adult games which is only a small fraction of that small market. so they could either spend a few 100k (definitely peanuts compared to how much they're making, but still money) on developing a system to improve their age verification beyond just selecting a random date of birth and clicking 'ok', or they could just say "♥♥♥♥ all that we'd rather just not spend any money at all on this" and make such games unavailable in germany alltogether.

[Ogami]

Originally posted by Luzilyo:

the way i see it, what really causes the problem is the fact that valve doesn't get any benefit for complying with german rules here. it's only the german market, which is already a pretty small one compared to usa, china, etc.

Germany is the largest video game sales market in Europe and the fourth largest worldwide.

How is that " pretty small" ?