I’ve received this picture from a friend of mine who’s living there, in which she tried purchasing Resident Evil Requiem whilst on sale (meanwhile, I can view that page as normal in my region). That’s only speaking about being signed in, its the same when a guest tries to view the page (rendering it inaccessible even to visitors without a steam account). I’m not from there, but to me that sounds completely retarded. If you or know someone who is from AU, is this annoying to put up with when buying games?
Blame the elected officials for forcing Valve’s hands. Valve effectively had these choices:
- Stop operating in Australia
- Not comply and pay fines
- Use CC as an indirect way to verify age (since banks are regulated themselves and do identify verification before issuing one)
- Do age verification (by themselves themselves or through a third-party) and put users data at risk in case of a data leak
To me it seems like they chose the least risky option available. One more thing Valve could do is exempt accounts that are older than xx years old.
You know who actually makes out like a bandit in this situation? The credit card companies. All the sudden a bunch of people are applying for credit cards that didn’t have one or need one before. And because some existing CC’s are getting rejected, people are actually thinking about applying for a second card!
And listen, this is Valve we’re talking about, it’s not like they don’t have the money and engineering talent and lawyers to figure out a way to make a system that works for consumers. They just have beef with Australia and are going with malicious compliance. For all the instances I’ve seen of people with accounts older than 18 years that are getting rejected, that’s a system rife with bugs. Valve could have absolutely rolled out a better system, they just chose to be lazy.
Looks to me like malicious compliance. Make the gamers pissed so they protest to who can change the law.
Also, at least they are not asking for a photo of your ID, so here’s that.
Yeah, they just implemented that law a few days ago.
Are you from AU? If so, did you do it or simply refuse to comply?
I’m not, just read it in the news.
But I guess you could try a VPN and buy the game from another country or pirate it.
I’m pretty sure it’s against valve TOS to use a VPN and buy games, so be careful with that.
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Australia has been weird about “violent video games” for some time now, haven’t they? I seem to remember GTA and maybe Fallout games having to be censored for the Australian market.
It’s not just video games. Their movie, television and video game rating review board are made up of old prudish boomers who consider a sneeze in the wind as offensive.
There have been some articles about how most politicians are fine with everything that happens and that voters have become numb to it or found ways to just circumnavigate the blocking.
I guess some people do not enjoy freedom as much as others.
They banned Manhunt and Bully iirc
Morphine was renamed to “Med X” for the international release because of their ineptude for context. They even removed the Alien probing sequence in the AU versions of SP: Stick of Truth.
There are basically two things you can’t do in a videogames here.
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Sexual Violence - it’s just not allowed, the South Park scene falls here.
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Realistic and/or beneficial depictions of drug use - This is where Morphine to Med-X falls.
Violence hasn’t been an issue an ~15 years, but used to be an issue since we didn’t have an R18 rating for games, they topped out at MA15+, so violence had to top out at what was acceptable for a 15 year old and no more, but that’s a thing of the past.
Then, the CC “Age verification” is unnecessary: but they’ve given into governmental coercion (fines).
It seems you’re more intent on insulting Australians and sparking outrage than actually discussing the issue. Have a good day.
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Don’t forget Left 4 Dead zombies simply vanishing when killed
I think they were one of the places where Fallout took out child models so players couldn’t kill them
What is stupid is you can get debit credit cards before your 18, which means that a 15 year old passes the are they over 18 check.
I don’t live there anymore but why do we put up with it? We don’t have a choice. Who else are we going to buy from? EB Games? Kmart? JBHifi? All of them just give you a steam code.
We are use to being fucked over by valve. We were paying for games in US$ until 2018 and the whole returns policy of 2 hours of gameplay is bullshit.
You need a Credit Card.
The Visa Debit I’ve had on file with steam for ~20 years was rejected. The account is older than the age requirement, Valve has had the card longer than the age requirement, but still no.
I used that card to buy DEFCON and that’s so long ago Valve no longer have records of it (transaction history starts at The Orange Box in 2007 due to changes almost 20 years ago, which was purchased with that card…)
I’m not getting anything like this and I only have a debit card, there must be something else going on. I’m not sure what else to look for but I can get to Resident Evil and porn game store pages without issue on the android app and website (I’m not home to check the PC client). My account is 15 years old so obviously I’d have to be old enough, but since that wasn’t a factor for you I don’t know what the rules are.
Not sure, both my CC and Debit are from the same bank. Account is as old as HL2.
I just added my CC, it was easy enough. But it’s silly that they don’t just grandfather it in.
My guess is that the law doesn’t allow wiggle room for using account age.
It does, it also allows multiple other forms of ID (some are far worse than CC though, face scan? GTFO) and is required as part of the ‘fairness test’ to offer several different ways of identifying.
Valve have opted only for CC, which is actually against the regulations (only allowing a single method, method that only ~40% of adults as per Parliamentary inquiry have access to)
But you need a credit card for the age verification now. A debit card won’t work.
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I wanna know when the Australian government will send some dudes out to kick in some doors and bust some heads to send a message against anyone trying to thwart this.
