In the UK, a new law will impose penalties on websites that don't using age verification while hosting adult content, but critics say the law has potential to create new dangers. Photo: PHILIPPE TURPIN
A recent wave of morally-motivated lobbying has succeeded in making big changes to global gaming and internet laws. Critics say there are potentially dangerous consequences.
When Australian lobby group Collective Shout published an open letter, calling for payment platforms including Visa and Mastercard to stop services to gaming platforms Itch.io and Steam, their stated aim was for the companies to "cease processing payments on gaming platforms which host rape, incest and child sexual abuse-themed games".
And it worked. Gaming platforms started pulling down games and removing any 'NSFW' (not safe for work) content.
But the wave of censorship has caught many games in its wake with little or no adult content whatsoever, including games with LGBTQ+ content. Many gamers say the move has had unintended consequences, and are complaining of overreach on the part of the payment processors and capitulation to outside conservative forces who do not otherwise interact with the world of gaming.
There is also worry about how new restrictions will hobble game development in future.
"I think game companies, some of them will be scared of making challenging, interesting, emotionally significant content because it might fall foul of the payment systems," says Simon McCallum, computer science and gaming expert at Victoria University.
But this is just one example of a recent wave of moves from groups getting material banned or restricted, and thwarting creativity is among the less serious of the risks.
In the UK, the government is going ahead with plans to implement untested age-verification laws that impose harsh penalties on websites that host adult content without ensuring its users are legally allowed to view it.
McCallum says "the European Union is also looking at potential age verification activities".
"This is seen as a 'we have to protect the children' kind of movement."
But critics say the reality might just be the opposite, and the UK government has elicited controversy for barrelling over criticism of the new policies and potentially creating new dangers. Reports of an explosive increase in the usage of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) reveals the possibility that people are still accessing adult material, now with even less oversight.
"The side effect of trying to squeeze harder and control more is that you push people into those riskier spaces just to get content that isn't particularly risky.
"Once you push all the R18 content into the illegal space, then there is no more monitoring of illegal content."
Age verification also creates potentially dangerous knock-on effects.
"In theory, age verification would be great if you had a safe way of verifying your age. But the challenge here - the devil is in the detail, because if you're going to an R18 site, do you want to share your personally identifiable information with that site?
"There had been suggestions of using the camera to verify people. I'm not sure I want you to turn on your camera and look at my 14 year old to verify they're a 14 year old and verify their face. This is not something that all parents are comfortable with."
Part of the issue seems to be pressure from lobbying groups and laws made by lawmakers who, regardless of how good their intentions, may not understand the intricacies of digital technology. The gamers will almost always figure out how to game the system.
"As a game developer, one of the hardest things when you're creating an engaging game world is understanding how your players will try to cheat and the actions they'll take and how they'll try to get around your rules and how you set up both rewards and punishments, and the effect of taking a small change in a rule here has on all the other behaviours in the game.
"I think the same is for understanding rule changes in society and understanding those unintended consequences; understanding the systemic challenges that you have; when you try to pull one lever how it affects a whole bunch of other parts of community."
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