EU Kids Act: A War on Gaming & Privacy — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] Whoa, whoa, whoa, pump the brakes there, buster. What do you think you're doing, you scoundrel? Did I just... Did I just catch you having fun? Do you have a license for that smile? I think you are unlawfully engaging in video games.

[00:12] You just hosted a custom game, right? You just... You just hosted a game online. Heaven forbid, see, it's worse than I thought. Yeah, we got him. Dead to rights. Pulling on the firing squad. Yeah, we're going to put him down like a sick animal, this fucking freak.

[00:26] Playing video games in the EU. Are you out of your mind? You're going straight to hell. You know that, right? You brought this upon yourself, Squirt. So, I don't know how many of you have heard about this. I only just learned about it through Ross's video.

[00:39] There is a new piece of legislation that's just dropped hot off the battle bus here called the EU Kids Act that uses the most classic standard smokescreen ever for lawmakers

[00:51] where it has this guise of protecting children, but what it actually is is just further increased surveillance and control and stepping on people's liberties. It is fucking atrocious here.

[01:04] So Ross made a video talking about it and how it relates to Stop Killing Games, but it also goes well beyond just affecting the Stop Killing Games movement. It is a full-blown declaration of war against gaming itself and seeking to further increase surveillance upon the citizens in the EU.

[01:21] It's fucking deplorable. I've only just heard about it, so I don't know how well-known this is at the moment, but I think it's important that people shine a light on this because it is very, very bad. Even to the biggest scrooge who hates video games,

[01:34] you should be able to look at something like this and recognize that this is completely unacceptable in a sane society. So it was recently leaked that the European Commission is introducing the EU Kids Act.

[01:46] Now what it claims to do is introduce more protection for minors when they're online. It focuses on social media and AI, but it also covers video games. But the discourse on this is driving me crazy.

[01:59] Because if you look at any mainstream news, they're framing the act as a question of what's the right balance between adults having privacy versus protecting children online? How much should the government protect kids versus the parents?

[02:14] Because I think everybody knows that social media and chatbots aren't that good for kids. Or adults. So the idea of laws curbing that can sound appealing. Which is very agreeable. I don't think there's many people out there that would have an issue with that. If this piece of legislation truly was looking to combat that and curb this epidemic, like anything to fight that would be something that most people would support and even applaud. But that's not what the EU Kids Act is. It's what it pretends to be. That's the mask that it wears. But that's not at all what the main driver is behind this piece of legislation.

[02:49] It is wide-reaching and is not there at all really to protect children. That's just the vehicle they use to make it palatable, to get it across the finish line, to actually implement the things they want.

[03:01] If limiting social media for minors was all this act was doing, I wouldn't be making this video. I don't have a horse in that race. But no, that's the cover. Protecting kids from social media is being used as a mask to hide what else is in there.

[03:18] Urban social media and AI has nothing to do with why this is such a horrible law proposal. As it stands, the EU Kids Act is the most draconian proposal I've ever seen regarding video games and consumers.

[03:31] I can't picture a soul on this planet surprised to hear that the EU Kids Act isn't actually about protecting children. This is a song and dance that people have seen hundreds of times by now,

[03:44] where they use the think of the children defense as a conduit to try and push through some truly abhorrent laws that will squash your liberties. It is something that's been done for so long now, all over the place, out the wazoo,

[04:01] and it is still being utilized to this day. Here's what's being left out of the discussion of what the EU Kids Act will do when it comes to video games. require your personal identifying information to play an online game.

[04:14] That's kind of a privacy concern, especially with places getting hacked all the time. Make it unlawful to operate an online video game without a complex age verification process Simply putting in your birth date won cut it Oh no Make all private video game servers illegal Are you kidding me Raise costs

[04:33] on developers dramatically if they wish to sell an online game. Huh, half a million sounds expensive for an indie dev. This is a concise breakdown that Roth offers for things that will definitely

[04:45] unfold should the EU Kids Act go into effect as written. So, according to his breakdown, this is what you can definitely expect, which is, I don't think I even need

[04:58] to tell you, horrific. It would make selling games in the EU just not feasible, especially for smaller studios. It also makes the consumer a little rat in a maze that they can constantly keep tabs on by forcing you to confirm your identity for their complex age verification

[05:14] process. I've laughed about this a lot. I hate that this is the direction everything's on. This isn't even EU exclusive. It happens over here too in the US where everything is now going in the direction where you need to input all of your personally identifying information into these

[05:29] services to have access. And people are so brainwashed by it that it becomes so normalized that now I'm viewed as an oddball for not wanting to put in my fucking driver's license or do a facial scan to access

[05:42] the most basic of places like a discord or something like we are entering the era where it is just becoming full blown surveillance all the time and people

[05:54] are welcoming it with open arms because things like this have been able to be brute forced into just mainstream and that people have been fed all of this fucking horseradish all of this baloney about

[06:06] why it's actually good for them that you can be constantly monitored by flock cameras when you're out and about. When you're online, thanks to all the age verification, you are constantly under surveillance. You are constantly under their fucking microscope.

[06:19] And people have been told that this is the gospel. That's what they're preaching now. So the death of privacy came with applause and cheers. And now anyone that wants even an iota of privacy to stay intact is viewed

[06:32] as weird for it. It's such a shame. And I'm not surprised by it because they set it up in a very clever way where what, you don't want to give over all your information so you want kids to be suffering out there?

[06:44] Selfish. That's actually something the EU, one of the representatives for an older EU law that was very fucking outrageous actually said with his whole chest, like, your refusal to give over your personal information like this

[06:56] is jeopardizing the safety of children and you're evil for it, that kind of thing. And that idea has been planted, now a lot of people parrot that. So I'm not surprised to see where things have ended up here. Make all digital video games require ID and have an age verification process.

[07:12] Yet not just the game platform, but each individual game. Make all physical video games that contain any online component, like downloadable patches, require ID and an age verification process.

[07:25] Make most distributions of Linux illegal. And collapse the EU video games market, except for the largest publishers. Now, to be fair, it would not make selling indie games illegal, but the effects would be similar if it did.

[07:38] Basically, it would push out all of the smaller developers because they wouldn't be able to just face-tank all of the increased costs of operating in the EU. Thus, they likely wouldn't sell in that market.

[07:51] So all you'd be left with is the largest publishers, which, yes, they will also take a hit should something like this pass, but they can just absorb that. That they can kegel right in their filthy fucking cheeks and they'll be okay for it.

[08:04] And they do actually have the added benefit of less competition now. So if this goes into effect, smaller game studios and indie devs, they likely will not have an EU presence for their titles, which means EU consumers will only be left with the largest publishers' titles,

[08:19] which is good for the largest publishers. That's who one of the big beneficiaries would be in this instance here, should it go into effect. Oh, and everything on this list will be applied retroactively.

[08:32] So if a game was released 20 years ago, it's now liable. Does any of this sound like it might be going beyond limiting how much time kids spend on social media? Just a little bit?

[08:44] It's so dishonest to label this as just protecting kids. This is steamrolling consumer rights of adults and threatening a chunk of the games industry in general If this proposal were to pass since I in the EU and I hosted a game of Unreal Tournaments or hey Minecraft then I would be breaking the law

[09:06] Yeah, you see this? This is going to be illegal if this passes. I'm sure you've heard similar things like this in the past, like if this law goes into effect, here's what's going to happen, and it's like the most extreme stuff imaginable,

[09:18] and then turns out, well, that was a little over the top. That's not exactly how it would play out. This isn't one of those cases. What he's describing here, from everything I can tell from what I've gathered from this, it is accurate to say that the ability to host like that would indeed be non-permissible.

[09:36] It wouldn't be compliant with this new legislation. So from everything I can see, it's not exaggeratory, but it's also so vaguely written and so nebulous that it's actually kind of hard to know exactly the effects that it'll have

[09:50] and what will and will not be around and what it looks like because they are so out of touch. They don't know this industry that they are now legislating against. They are very unfamiliar with what any of this shit even is in the first place.

[10:03] I wouldn't be surprised if they're just now learning what a fucking email is. Like, these are archaic dinosaurs. These are fossils. These octogenarians obviously don't know anything about gaming, yet they are passing some extremely harsh laws

[10:15] against it. Now, you might be thinking, I must be exaggerating. The government can't be this crazy. But, no, I don't think I am. But don't take my word for it.

[10:29] I encourage everyone to double-check what I'm saying. There's a link to the leaked proposal in the description. Hell, this thing is so bad, even the lobby has spoken out against it. Mildly, anyway.

[10:41] And this is a side note, but I have to point out the hypocrisy of the lobby talking about rights of play when that's exactly what they've been fighting or moving on for over a year? So there are only four rights when it suits them.

[10:54] Yeah, that's how rights are supposed to work, right? I mean, that kind of tells a whole story in and of itself that the lobby that is just, like, very strictly against things like stop killing games even had to speak out against the EU Kids Act

[11:07] because of how overreaching and how, like, dangerous and over-the-top it is. Again, I know how easy it is to hear about a proposal like this and just assume that the scaremongering talking points about it aren't accurate or are dramatized for the sake of content or clicks or something.

[11:26] And in a lot of cases, historically, you would be right. In a case like this, that's not accurate. It is as bad as Ross is describing it. based on everything I've seen about it and all of the other people that are also talking about it from the industry,

[11:41] it is truly just that terrible of a proposal. Now, it is just a proposal. This hasn't gone into effect. It's not going into effect any time soon. Hopefully, it is just a proposal. But the fact that this is even being floated around is alarming.

[11:54] And again, this is nothing about protecting children. That is not actually what they're trying to do there. That is just a convenient excuse to erode rights. It is something that has been done time and time again, and it is being attempted here, but being called out and having a right turned on it, which is good, so hopefully it can be squashed.

[12:13] But it still is important to talk about these things and why they're unacceptable. Because this is just crazy that this would be something that they are putting meat behind. It's just fucking ridiculous, and it's something that no one should support, and hopefully no one falls for the fake, the ruse here of it being to protect children online.

[12:30] because that's not the goal of this. That's not what it's trying to do. It is once again trying to get rid of like the semi-anonymous internet space and tie all of your online activity to you,

[12:42] your real identification, so you can be better surveilled by you in this case. It sucks. It's not actually trying to keep kids off social media and like dangerous AI chatbots and AI stuff

[12:56] and like these dangerous pockets online or anything. It's not doing anything like that. It is solely just as a way to brute force these really bad things for civilians through.

[13:08] First, let's look at what kinds of games are covered. Well, it outlines it here. They talk about how games with user-generated content are included. And here if you read this part this isn just online games This is all video games Any game that is executed remotely locally paid free it everything But wait there an exemption Yeah online games that are physical and completely

[13:34] offline are not considered online games. See, writing like this is why the commission gets paid the big bucks. And you have to love this exemption at the same time Sony is discontinuing physical media? That's like regulating

[13:47] how long you're allowed to watch a movie but saying VHS tapes are exempt. Now this is splitting hairs, but what about offline physical games that still connect online to get patches? Do those count?

[13:59] Does that count as enabling access? It's super interesting because they do go to great lengths to make sure that this is a kitten caboodle. It encompasses everything that can even be arguably a game.

[14:11] Like every possible way of including games. into this, putting them in the crosshairs here, except for that very odd exemption. And like Ross points out,

[14:23] if it is an offline game that connects through patches, does that then once again put it in the hot seat? Who really knows? The proposal is very confusing, but they do go to an extreme level of detail

[14:37] in letting you know what is going to be affected here for games. It's everything gaming. But let's keep going. They define it further. Online games means a video game or video gaming platform.

[14:51] Here they define video games themselves, and they're saying they are now all considered services. This is a very recent interpretation saying this. We asked the commission this exact question back in 2024, and they dodged the answer.

[15:06] But now every video game is a service, apparently. So how do they define this service? Any information society service, that is to say, any service normally provided for remuneration,

[15:18] had a distance by electronic means and had the individual request of a recipient of services. And they define it further, basically talking about electronic storing data. Oh my God. But hey, you'll be happy to know that this does not include arcade cabinets, so they're exempt.

[15:35] Oh yeah, finger on the pulse there. I got a giggle out of me. Don't worry, arcade cabinets don't fall into this category. Why are you guys booing? That's their level of understanding of gaming.

[15:49] They make an exception for arcade cabinets. They still think of gaming the way that the 80s movies thought of gaming. You feel like, almost like Timmy Turner surfing on an email.

[16:01] But even if you have the money, there is so much additional work you'll have to do for your online game. If you care about this part, you're going to want to pause the video around here. There's just too much for me to go over all of this, but here's a decent overview of the additional requirements you'll have to implement in your game.

[16:18] Some highlights I saw were no game activities exceeding one hour of playtime, having to block screenshots, which I don't think is even possible on the application level. This is really death by a thousand cuts, except some of these are really deep cuts.

[16:34] You know, I've seen bad-faced interpretations of Stop Killing Games before that act like we're the boogeyman because we're asking for one thing, that publishers don't deliberately destroy games customers already paid for.

[16:46] Well, here's the actual boogeyman. Take a long, hard look at our opposition here, because this is what wins if we lose. These requirements look pretty rough to me.

[16:58] And remember, the Act explicitly states there is no exemption for small studios. There's a lot more Ross covers here that I highly recommend you check out his full video on. I just wanted to showcase that right there, the fucking almost scrolling Star Wars level intro there,

[17:14] where it seems to never end with the amount of things that are just kind of alarming about it. If you stop and scroll through some of them, it's fucking outlandish. It's straight hogwash. Again, I highly recommend you watch Ross's entire video breaking it down and giving like a high-level overview of it,

[17:30] but it is a very long proposal. There are a ton of pages to it, so there's not like a full comprehensive breakdown available at the moment from any professionals that I was able to find. It was mainly people focusing on specific components and how they relate to gaming and what they'll affect and such.

[17:45] The proposal is really bad. So anyway, I wanted to yap about it a little bit. That's about it. See ya.