Why can't steam remember my date of birth?

[andyhames]

It is frustrating that I have to keep re-entering my date of birth to view some pages when I am a logged in user with an account, why can't Steam just have it on the account?

I understand about aggregation of data, PII and I live in a GDPR country which had some implications but Steam saves my name, phone number, payment card details and lets me set my own mature content settings, so why not let me enter my date or even just year or birth and store that rather than a system where I can just spin the wheels and put any old random date in anyway with no way of verification?

As an adult can you not give me the option to tell tell you I was born in 1980?

[rawWwRrr]

Just leave it set to Jan 1, then spin the year back to whatever works.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by andyhames:

Why can't steam remember my date of birth?

It is frustrating that I have to keep re-entering my date of birth to view some pages when I am a logged in user with an account, why can't Steam just have it on the account?

I understand about aggregation of data, PII and I live in a GDPR country which had some implications but Steam saves my name, phone number, payment card details and lets me set my own mature content settings, so why not let me enter my date or even just year or birth and store that rather than a system where I can just spin the wheels and put any old random date in anyway with no way of verification?

As an adult can you not give me the option to tell tell you I was born in 1980?

Been asked soooooo many times that Valve even made a Q&A for it years ago...

Q: Why do you KEEP asking my damn age throughout the store?

A: We're with you on this. Unfortunately, many rating agencies have rules that stipulate that we cannot save your age for longer than a single browsing session. It's frustrating, but know we're filling out those age gates too.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1708442022337025126

When logged into your account, only the month gets reset back to Jan.

I put in 1, Jan 1900.

[RiO]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Originally posted by andyhames:

Why can't steam remember my date of birth?

It is frustrating that I have to keep re-entering my date of birth to view some pages when I am a logged in user with an account, why can't Steam just have it on the account?

I understand about aggregation of data, PII and I live in a GDPR country which had some implications but Steam saves my name, phone number, payment card details and lets me set my own mature content settings, so why not let me enter my date or even just year or birth and store that rather than a system where I can just spin the wheels and put any old random date in anyway with no way of verification?

As an adult can you not give me the option to tell tell you I was born in 1980?

Been asked soooooo many times that Valve even made a Q&A for it years ago...

Q: Why do you KEEP asking my damn age throughout the store?

A: We're with you on this. Unfortunately, many rating agencies have rules that stipulate that we cannot save your age for longer than a single browsing session. It's frustrating, but know we're filling out those age gates too.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1708442022337025126

When logged into your account, only the month gets reset back to Jan.

I put in 1, Jan 1900.

:winterbunny2023:

Gotta love the 'many rating agencies' deflection in that Q&A item though.

PEGI for one, doesn't have this restriction in their charter. And I've never heard of CERO having it either. So that leaves the ESRB or some of the smaller nationally operating content-rating agencies, like the Germans have.

What it boils down to is that Valve is going with the lowest common denominator, to retain their ideal low-effort one-size-must-fit-all feature development pipeline.

[Cathulhu]

Which is a sensible approach in terms of KISS.

[RiO]

Originally posted by Cathulhu:

Which is a sensible approach in terms of KISS.

Yet a poor one in terms of the end-user experience.
And it's not like Valve is shy on the dosh to manage doing it properly.

[andyhames]

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

Just leave it set to Jan 1, then spin the year back to whatever works.

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

When logged into your account, only the month gets reset back to Jan.

I put in 1, Jan 1900.

:winterbunny2023:

I noticed that, but even this seems crazy when the year alone is enough to work it out!

Thanks for the replies 👍

[rawWwRrr]

Originally posted by andyhames:

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

Just leave it set to Jan 1, then spin the year back to whatever works.

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

When logged into your account, only the month gets reset back to Jan.

I put in 1, Jan 1900.

:winterbunny2023:

I noticed that, but even this seems crazy when the year alone is enough to work it out!

Thanks for the replies 👍

Because the age gate is meant to idemnify Valve from liability. It shifts it to the user. If you're old enough to view the content, why would Valve care if you enter your birthdate wrong? And if you weren't old enough, they can blame you for bypassing the age gate.

[KaveMan]

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

Originally posted by andyhames:

I noticed that, but even this seems crazy when the year alone is enough to work it out!

Thanks for the replies 👍

Because the age gate is meant to idemnify Valve from liability. It shifts it to the user. If you're old enough to view the content, why would Valve care if you enter your birthdate wrong? And if you weren't old enough, they can blame you for bypassing the age gate.

Thus it's a flawed system, Might as well be selling guns to kids without any ID.. Valve doesn't care, as long as they making money.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by KaveMan:

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

Because the age gate is meant to idemnify Valve from liability. It shifts it to the user. If you're old enough to view the content, why would Valve care if you enter your birthdate wrong? And if you weren't old enough, they can blame you for bypassing the age gate.

Thus it's a flawed system, Might as well be selling guns to kids without any ID.. Valve doesn't care, as long as they making money.

You can't really compare guns or physical weapons to digital content.

It's basically the same thing that porn sites do to indemnify themselves.

[Crashed]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Originally posted by KaveMan:

Thus it's a flawed system, Might as well be selling guns to kids without any ID.. Valve doesn't care, as long as they making money.

You can't really compare guns or physical weapons to digital content.

It's basically the same thing that porn sites do to indemnify themselves.

:winterbunny2023:

Porn sites just say yes or no. There will always be those strawman fallacies. The age gate as it exists was invented by the ESRB. And as such I consider "ESRB Privacy Certified" to mean block cookies as much as possible and give fake info to those prompts.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by Crashed:

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

You can't really compare guns or physical weapons to digital content.

It's basically the same thing that porn sites do to indemnify themselves.

Porn sites just say yes or no. There will always be those strawman fallacies. The age gate as it exists was invented by the ESRB. And as such I consider "ESRB Privacy Certified" to mean block cookies as much as possible and give fake info to those prompts.

It's still all for indemnification.

Some states now require ID verification to visit porn sites.

[rawWwRrr]

Originally posted by KaveMan:

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

Because the age gate is meant to idemnify Valve from liability. It shifts it to the user. If you're old enough to view the content, why would Valve care if you enter your birthdate wrong? And if you weren't old enough, they can blame you for bypassing the age gate.

Thus it's a flawed system, Might as well be selling guns to kids without any ID.. Valve doesn't care, as long as they making money.

When video games subject children to the same dangers as firearms do, they would have to go a bit further than an age gate.

But even some firearms sites ask "are you at least 18 years old?" before perusing their site. So your comparison argument is a bit weak.

[Crashed]

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

Originally posted by KaveMan:

Thus it's a flawed system, Might as well be selling guns to kids without any ID.. Valve doesn't care, as long as they making money.

When video games subject children to the same dangers as firearms do, they would have to go a bit further than an age gate.

But even some firearms sites ask "are you at least 18 years old?" before perusing their site. So your comparison argument is a bit weak.

And some people don't know the prompt that acts a lot like a phishing page was imposed by contractual obligation from ESRB.

[HikariLight]

The reason Steam cannot remember our birthday?
International privacy laws.
Steam being a privately owned business has no need or reason to see the level of personal info needed to verify someones ID.
Also, with how every State in the USA having different IDs and every country having their own separate IDs, it would be too expensive for Valve to deal with along with needing access to government databases, which no company should have access to.

[Brian9824]

Originally posted by KaveMan:

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

Because the age gate is meant to idemnify Valve from liability. It shifts it to the user. If you're old enough to view the content, why would Valve care if you enter your birthdate wrong? And if you weren't old enough, they can blame you for bypassing the age gate.

Thus it's a flawed system, Might as well be selling guns to kids without any ID.. Valve doesn't care, as long as they making money.

Not really, its just ignorance on your part to what the intent is. As already stated its not about preventing access to the games, its about protecting valve from lawsuits if a minor lies to get access. Its the minimum and least intrusive method that satisfies the laws and protects them.