Nexus Mods is set to introduce age verification for folks in the UK and EU attempting to gander at NSFW add-ons, as part of incoming changes to how the site handles mods containing adult or “illegal” content.
In a news post, Nexus Mods content team lead SlugGirl outlined that these changes are being made in response to the UK’s Online Safety Act and the EU’s Digital Services Act, along with guidance being issued by UK regulator Ofcom. Site founder Robin ‘Dark0ne’ Scott has commented on the post in an effort to reassure users that these policy adjustments aren’t a result of Nexus Mods’ recent change in ownership, and would have had to happen regardless.
UK and EU users will need to verify their ages when accessing “the majority of adult content hosted on the site”. “The specifics of this are being carefully considered as we want to get this right so that the option to view adult content remains available to adults, whilst fulfilling our legal obligation to ensure children are safe on our website,” SlugGirl wrote.
This change won’t affect users outside of the UK and EU, however, unless your country passes legislation that requires it.
Nexus say that this and the raft of other tweaks outlined in the post are the result of being given the choice of doing this and getting rid of adult content for UK and EU users entirely. As founder Scott, who recently passed Nexus Mods on to new owners Chosen, put it in his comment: “the law is the law, and Nexus Mods will, and must, follow the law.
“For the people who think this is the fault of the new owners of Nexus Mods,” he went on, “please either read the news post above properly or read up on the laws around child safety online that are coming to every major western country either this month, or in the coming year (including most states in the US).
“Whoever owned Nexus Mods, whether it was still me or the new ownership, would have had to have dealt with it this year no matter what. Frankly, I’m relieved that it is not me who has to deal with this or be responsible for the content on the site directly because I have some big misgivings about how it is being enforced. However, if it was me, I would still have followed the letter of the law, and I’d have been doing what is written above. Because I’d have to.”
As for what else is changing, while Nexus Mods makes clear that some the details are “still being worked out behind the scenes”, they’ve outlined a raft of planned revisions for the site’s approach to illegal content, categorisation and tags for adult content, together with changes to the block and mute systems.
As far as illegal stuff, the site’s Terms of Service’ll be updated with a “more detailed definition of what counts as illegal content under UK law and how we protect children from harm whilst on the site”. The site will also automatically take down material depicting child sexual abuse, as well as banning uploaders and reporting them to the UK’s National Crime Agency.
Meanwhile, Nexus Mods are introducing revised tags for mods that contain legal adult content, which are as follows:
- Pornographic
- Extreme Violence
- Harmful substances
- Suicide
- Self-harm
- Depression
- Body stigma
- Eating disorders
- Swearing or Profanity
- Sexualised
“These tags can be added by our moderators and staff and will be locked in place once added,” Nexus Mods explained, “Of course, this does not change the ability mod authors have to tag their mods and users’ ability to vote on tags.” You’ll be able to filter out mods according to these tags if you don’t want to see them, just as you currently can with mods tagged adult.
While it’s easy to see the logic behind most of these changes, the lack of detail regarding the form of the new age verification and what sorts of personal data it might ask for has left some Nexus Mods users with lingering questions. There’s also the matter of the site not having yet outlined in-depth what sorts of mods its new tags will encompass.
The likes of suicide seem pretty self-explanatory, but extreme violence and depression are a bit more vague, as well as being things a lot of the base games you might mod include or depict in some form. Swearing and profanity could also be very complicated to police, given that different words fall under those categories depending on where you are in the world.
“Some of these changes are live already and will be detailed in the next monthly roundup, while others will roll out gradually over the coming weeks and months,” SlugGirl wrote to round out the post. “We’ll do our best to make the transition as smooth as possible, but we understand this may cause some disruption.”
