That is not correct. They are now required by law to properly verify the age of their Users. Not only is a lot of work, and costly to set up, but also, understandably, terrible for privacy, since your username could now be linked to your real id, which you would have to present.
The simplest solution for any dev is to sell steam keys on itch.io.
Do you know how much more money they would make if they would just do the most simple thing and check users ages?
Do you know how much more adult oriented games Steam would be able to feature and that way would be able to be sell?
Do you have ANY idea how much profit Steam would make over how much money they would have to invest?
I am sorry for being so hostile on this however I have seen this point over and over again and it falls apart every time someone puts even an ounce of logic to it.
Steam COULD do this. But just like with TF2, Valve wont pull the trigger unless they have to. They are lying in a made bed. Steam is printing them money. Age verification is something it doesnt require and therefor it wont do it. Money is not the problem, they make around 100 times the amount this would cost monthly anyhow.
That’s just not true. The usual way this is done - after all, a similar thing is already done in other contexts - would be to have a public API run by the state. You can use a hash (generated from say, the serial number of your ID card or passport) to ask certain factual questions. For purposes of this, “Is this person over 18y old?”. The API then replies yes or no.
That’s it. Nobody knows anything else. You could even abstract the serial number if you want to, but we readily give out our names during payment anyways and there’s not much more you can do with the serial. But it could be hashed client-side.
This is incredibly easy to do, to the point where the equivalent part is already done in a whole lot of areas, and in other countries is already used for age-checks albeit not in a game-buying context.
