Aussie Xbox Owners Need To Confirm Age Before Playing 18+ Games
The government is forcing XBOX’s hand to require users to verify that they are 18+ when trying to play 18+ games on both your Xbox Series X|S or PC via the Microsoft Store. Yes, this is tied to the controversial Online Safety Act that the UK, Australia, and now parts of the US are pushing onto its citizens in a controversial bid to “protect the children.”
Reported by Press Start, there are a number of ways you can verify your age, though, I suspect a majority will opt for email-based age verification, but that’ll probably only be if you’ve had your email for over a decade, as that seems the least intrusive of the bunch, but also might not work to prove your age if you’ve only just opened it for the purpose of setting up an Xbox account.
- Email-based age verification
- Facial age estimation using a secure selfie
- Credit Card
- Government-issued ID (driver’s license, passport, national ID, residence permit)
Of course, it comes at the cost of people feeling unsafe using some services, as some services used for data collection have suffered breaches in the past, with some — such as Discord’s Persona — even leaking government IDs.
