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In compliance with local laws, Steam rolled out age verification in Australia two months ago. Controversially, it was based on whether you owned a credit card, which many Australians do not. Overnight, Australians stopped being able to see games that are rated R18+ in the Steam store, like Doom, if they didn’t have a credit card linked to their account.
Just as suddenly, Steam support has now updated how age verification works for Australians. Adding a credit card to your account still works, but additionally: “Steam will automatically consider your account age verified if it is at least nine years old and has had a consistent email address or billing information.”
If you’ve moved house in the last nine years and let Steam know about it then your billing information won’t have been consistent, so I sure hope you haven’t changed both your email and physical address in that time.
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Valve notes that it is aware this solution still isn’t ideal for everyone: “We understand that not all Australians will be able to verify their age using our existing options. We are looking into other ways to comply with Australia’s age verification rules while also limiting the data we collect and store from users.”
Other storefronts provide alternative options like ID scans and face scans via digital age assurer Yoti. The Microsoft Store also takes your email account into consideration, via VerifyMy, the same assurer YouTube uses.
