From 15 November 2024 onwards, games without age rating will no longer be available to German customers on Steam. The road up to this point has been long, and Valve as well as agencies have fought for solutions, including potentially better ones for consumers.
Valve Corporation, the gaming software giant from Bellevue in the US state of Washington, has a crown jewel in its catalogue: Steam, the biggest digital sales shop on PC for games. Critics and admirers alike provide the argument that Steam is the de-facto monopol for game sales on PC, even if other platforms do exist. Developers want their games to be sold on Steam, while analysts constantly research and game the algorithm of the shop showcase system to bring their customers’ games to the front page. Some big publisher has given up on the endeavour to establish their own game launcher apart from Steam, Bethesda for example, while others have rolled back their proprietary store exclusiveness to be back on Steam, most recently Ubisoft.
It is no wonder then that Valve has the confidence to do things their own way. A tale that has led to much confusion in one area especially: Youth protection. An area that is extremely important to German authorities, which in some cases led to clashes between the company from the US and the central-European market‘s youth protection organisations. Now, with some preliminary steps taken in 2021 and 2023, the troubles seem to cede, and cede with a bang: From 15 November onward, all games that have no age verification either from the German self-regulatory body USK or from Steam‘s internal system, will vanish from the store for users browsing from Germany. But why are we here now? And how has it come to this?
