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Eris Lord Freedom1 year ago(+3)

As noted above: A 13-year-old needs parental/guardian permission to set up a publisher account. If the games cost money, that involves a bank account somewhere, which also means needing adult support. 

Content restrictions for 13-year-olds are "whatever the law allows in your area." In the US, that's pretty broad as long as they're not dealing with photos of minors. (I don't just mean sexy photos; there are privacy laws involved.) If they stay away from sexual content, there may not be any limits.

But for the practical side of things: NEVER TELL ANYONE ONLINE YOU ARE UNDER 18. Because there are predators online who look for young people who don't know how to spot them. The predators are not the ones who will reply with "kids should not be making this kind of content" or "I guess it's okay if your parents agree." Predators will say "oh that's great - let me help you! I turned 18 two months ago and everyone was mean to me when I was thirteen; let me show you where you can host files that your parents can't find them; I'll help you set up a bank account - I'll be the co-signer and pretend to be your parent, okay? What's your address? Oh, and your birthday and social security number; we need those."

Make the content you want to make. As far as sharing it goes - Find a trusted adult who understands internet safety and talk to them about it. Not "someone who can lecture you about creepy predators" but "someone who knows how you can avoid doing something now, that you won't care about for several years but could mess up your chances to get into the college program you want." The dangers aren't limited to "some jerk tries to scam you or get creepy at you." 

(Would a gore-fest video game mess up your college chances? I have no idea. I don't think so. But I'm long past caring what other people think of my hobbies - and am not in a position where people can use them against me.) 

Will your high school teachers be able to find this post in three years? You don't know! Itch.io doesn't even know; they have no idea what forum software they'll be using in three years, or how searchable their old archives will be.

If you are going to a forum full of strangers to say "I'm 13; please help me figure out what to do" - the answer is going to be "talk to your parents, and please keep yourself hidden for another few years." Because you obviously don't know what the risks are, so you don't know how to keep yourself safe.

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Ponydragon1 year ago

Good advice. I also think the real reason is the exposure to the intenet. Not only because of predators, but because of interaction with strangers in general. Actually, if you look closely at released games with age ratings, the online interactions with other players is usually not rated, like this:  Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB (PC).

And those stranges do not even need to be adults. Kids can be cruel. Taking abuse from a fellow player is another thing than getting bad comments and ratings on your game and art. This is hard for adults too.

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Quantum Qode Studios1 year ago

Good point there.

These days it is common for kids to insult and swear at each other while playing multiplayer games.

But mostly kids are threatened by adults who are looking for innocent kids they can fool.

Like for example a 13 yo makes a game. The predator will praise the game and say something like 'Its awesome how do you make such games I am only 11 years old and just learned game development. Can you please try my games and tell how is it and what changes should be made in it'.  The poor kid gets fooled and he opens the game and boom. He's hacked.

Or maybe some hacker will ask a kid to join his discord server and give him a link. Now the link will lead to a fake discord with an a similar url and identical page. It will ask the kid to tell his discord Id and password. When he enters it, the fake website will send it to the hacker who will be able to login the kids discord. Then simply the kid is doomed.

But this not only happens with kids. It happens with adults as well as you said like getting bad comments.

The same way adults can end up installing trojan horses and suffer from malware such as ransomware.

I think I've made a pretty long speech here 😅

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