Steam: Why some of the best indie games will soon be hidden in Germany
On November 15, games without an age rating will disappear from the German Steam store. Several top-class indie classics could be affected.
(Image: Rokas Tenys/Shutterstock.com)
The German Steam Store is about to undergo a drastic change: from November 15, Valve wants to hide all games that do not have an age rating on their store page. With this change, Steam operator Valve is taking into account the 2021 reform of the law for the protection of minors, which stipulates a labeling obligation for gaming platforms. It is irrelevant which age rating a game would actually receive – Instead, it is important that the information is displayed in the store.
"Games without an age rating valid in Germany will be hidden for customers in Germany from November 15, 2024," Valve writes on a support page, which the independent Steam database SteamDB refers to in a Twitter post. Affected titles can then no longer be purchased from Germany.
The path to age rating
Steam game providers have two options for obtaining a valid age rating: On the one hand, there is the USK rating. This is mandatory for all titles that are also released on data carriers. This is mainly reserved for larger games, but the USK also tests some purely digital titles. For all other games, there is a Steam questionnaire that developers can complete independently. Steam then assigns the title an IARC label based on the answers, which can be displayed on the store page and meets the requirements of the German Youth Protection Act.
This is a comparatively simple process that any developer can follow. A random check by heise online shows that most newly released titles, even from smaller studios, already have an IARC age rating on their store page. These titles will therefore still be available after November 15. The situation is different for some older indie titles – where heise online has found many examples that currently have no visible age rating on their store page.
"Papers, Please" and "Slay the Spire" could fly
These include some absolute indie classics – such as "Return of the Obra Dinn" and "Papers, Please" by acclaimed solo developer Lucas Pope. If they still do not display an age rating on their store pages on November 15, they will be hidden from German users. Some other well-known examples of indie titles that currently do not display a rating are "Pathologic" and "Pathologic 2", "Undertale", "Minit", "Cave Story", "FEZ" and "Slay the Spire" – The list goes on.
The developers of the games concerned could fill out the Steam questionnaire at any time and incorporate the resulting age rating into the store websites of their titles. This would still be possible after November 15. However, as they have not yet done so, the future of their titles in the German Steam Store is currently open. For some games, it is also possible that the developer studio and publisher no longer exist or that the responsibilities are unclear. It is therefore to be feared that the Steam Store in Germany will soon shrink somewhat.
The Youth Protection Act stipulates it
The amendment to the Youth Protection Act, which came into force in 2021, stipulates a labeling requirement for digital platforms that distribute films and video games. Such platforms may only offer games if they are provided with a "clearly visible label".
This also explicitly applies to providers that are not based in Germany. The only exceptions are platforms that demonstrably have fewer than one million users or only sell to adults – This does not include Steam or other large gaming platforms such as GOG or Epic Games. The rules that Steam is now enforcing with some delay also apply there.
(dahe)
