Steam now requires UK users to verify age by storing a valid credit card on their accounts before accessing mature content pages, games, or community hubs. Valve chose credit-card verification as a privacy-preserving measure and as a deterrent to multiple people sharing one account. The approach delegates age checks to banks because UK credit cards require holders to be 18. Other platforms have used selfie-based checks; some UK age-gating rules were found easy to bypass with VPNs or image tricks, and Microsoft is also rolling out UK age verification for Xbox services ahead of 2026 requirements.
Valve has started to comply with the UK's Online Safety Act, by rolling out a requirement for all Brits to verify their age with a credit card to access "mature content" pages and games on Steam. UK users won't even be able to access the community hubs of mature content games unless a valid credit card is stored on a Steam account.
"Among all age assurance mechanisms reviewed by Valve, this process preserves the maximum degree of user privacy," says Valve in a support article. "Having the credit card stored as a payment method acts as an additional deterrent against circumventing age verification by sharing a single Steam user account among multiple persons." In the UK you need to be 18 years of age to obtain a credit card, so this passes the age checks onto banks instead of Valve having to perform them.
While platforms like Reddit, Bluesky, and Discord have opted for age verification checks using selfies, Valve is restricting its age checks to just credit cards. Valve's decision to require a credit card comes weeks after the UK's new age-gating rules have been found to be easy to bypass, especially with VPNs. Discord and Reddit's UK age verification could be briefly defeated by Death Stranding's photo mode, but the face scanning tools have since been updated to block this bypass method.
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