Security Writer 
Valve: “We need a credit card on file to prove you’re 18”
Me: “My account is 23 years old”
Valve: “That just proves your account is old”
Me: “A credit card just proves you know someone with a credit card”
Ok this is interesting.
The desktop app has no such restrictions, only mobile.
yetzt@SecurityWriter using a desktop is dating yourself. as an old fart.
Billy Smith
Tim Chase
Kye.br 
@yetzt @SecurityWriter But, it’s steam. How can you play games without a desktop.
Rantanplan
C++ Wage Slave
Chris OliverOh, good old product silos, still keeping things consistent. /s
Mike Siegel@SecurityWriter my favorite is apps that offer webauthn features on their mobile app, but desktop doesn't offer 2FA? Da fuq? Do they have an actual fucking potato doing their threat modeling?
Martin Seeger@SecurityWriter For some time Valve made me jump through hoops because I had a „strange email address“.
The support told me to use something like gmail. My email address is older than Valve and Google..
Martin@[email protected]
I have a strange email, too. Only two persons have an account on that server. Luckily that was never an issue for Valve. Only Tonline required me to send an email and ask for an manual unblock of my servers IP to be able to send mails to them.
@[email protected]
I have a strange email, too. Only two persons have an account on that server. Luckily that was never an issue for Valve. Only Tonline required me to send an email and ask for an manual unblock of my servers IP to be able to send mails to them.
@[email protected]
Cyber Grimes@martin @masek @SecurityWriter
One of my email aliases is literally just a domain I own, and it gets rejected regularly. What, we aren't allowed to have custom domains now? They going to start enforcing that on companies as well? "Sorry, your techdept(@)google(dot)com email is suspicious, maybe try gmail?" Lol
Recently started using aliases, and the shit some of these platforms come up with when they want you to use something they can use to mine your data is wild. "Oh, something went wrong. Please try again." Three "tries again" and suddenly their "hinting" gets more blunt, "Maaaaybe you should try a different email address." Lol, nope don't actually need SoundCloud thanks. 🖕😘
@SecurityWriter You can't say meaningful things to bureacracy, even worse to bureacracy created for people control.
BTW even my Steam account dates back to portal creation, λ2
BTW even my Steam account dates back to portal creation, λ2
draeath@luc0x61 @SecurityWriter mine goes back to when steam was a replacement for O.G. HL's multiplayer service, WoN. My account name is an email address itself 😅
@draeath @SecurityWriter HL1 was already a game changer for me. I started playing FPS when Doom was on a set of 1.44M floppy disks, and its pseudo-3D gameplay was real magic, running on an i286 below 20MHz clock.
HL brought a real, movie like, story, in 3D gaming. That was amazing, and it still is, if you look beyond the now pixelated screens.
The only other game that brought me adrenaline, even when standing still, is HL:Alyx, played in VR. That leaves speechless.
HL brought a real, movie like, story, in 3D gaming. That was amazing, and it still is, if you look beyond the now pixelated screens.
The only other game that brought me adrenaline, even when standing still, is HL:Alyx, played in VR. That leaves speechless.
Stefan Baur 8 * 💉@luc0x61 @draeath @SecurityWriter See, now we know you're making this up, because DOOM required an i386 or better …
@farbenstau @draeath @SecurityWriter Well, you make me doubt of my memories, but I remember that at that division we still had "286 at the time. Quite confident that a guy on the purchasing dept. had a '286 when we played 4 players deathmatch on local Novell IPX network.
Did we already switch to 386? 🤔
Did we already switch to 386? 🤔
@luc0x61 @draeath @SecurityWriter https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/a4yi5t/original_doom_system_requirements_from_my_25_year/ here's a copy of the original spec thas lists i386 as minimum, i486 as recommended. I seriously doubt a DOS extender would have worked on an i286, anyway …
@farbenstau @draeath @SecurityWriter Yep, you're right: then we had switched to 386! 🤷♂️
My memories of three decades ago are disappearing, I'm ready for retirement! 😂
My memories of three decades ago are disappearing, I'm ready for retirement! 😂
DressToKILT@dresstokilt @farbenstau @draeath @SecurityWriter That's true for latest reimplementations, but the original was only for i386, as said above: clearly my memories on when we switched from i286 to i386 in that department were wrong!
@luc0x61 @dresstokilt @draeath @SecurityWriter See, that's why I'm glad this isn't Twitter - over there, instead of admitting one is wrong, the typical reply would have involved questioning my mother's morale, followed by a block and counter-block. 🤪
@luc0x61 @farbenstau @draeath @SecurityWriter my 286 only had a CGA card so I don't th8nknit could have handled it anyway.
@dresstokilt @farbenstau @draeath @SecurityWriter At this point I don't remember what graphics card I had there! I worked in two different places, somewhere we had some scientific setup, otherwise we had plain business machines.
I remember of the site for the Doom DM, with 4 players on the local network. It was also something very new for us. From home we dialled by slow modems, for a point-to-point two players gameplay.
I'd never believe in those times of the 6 Gbps fiber I have at home now!
I remember of the site for the Doom DM, with 4 players on the local network. It was also something very new for us. From home we dialled by slow modems, for a point-to-point two players gameplay.
I'd never believe in those times of the 6 Gbps fiber I have at home now!
@luc0x61 @dresstokilt @draeath @SecurityWriter Consider yourself lucky. I'm stuck at 6-12 (only on a good day) MBit/s via DSL, yes, in 2026.
@farbenstau @dresstokilt @draeath @SecurityWriter I consider myself lucky: another house, 2 km from here, has a 70 Mbps DSL connection on lucky days, when the phone switch isn't flooded. A friend's former house, 30 km from here, had the DSL connection running below 1 Mbps (yes, less than 1000 kbps).
There are areas here where no phone company invests money, even if they're 200 meters from best connectivity.
There are areas here where no phone company invests money, even if they're 200 meters from best connectivity.
Maki 🔻 🌹@RandamuMaki @luc0x61 @draeath @SecurityWriter Heh. Actually never tried that back in the days, because possession of that game was illegal in my country back then.
Aron Lindegård@luc0x61 @SecurityWriter it's the tech companies pushing for control, it doesn't come from bureaucracy. They want to be able to tell advertisers that real humans are seeing ads, not just bots and AI agents. Bureaucracy just sucked dick and took bribes.
RejZoR@SecurityWriter I still need to constantly input my date of birth before seeing some game pages even though the setting is set in my profile. Wtf?
@rejzor @SecurityWriter I don't remember where it is but there is a setting for that. I managed to turn off age promoting because yeah, rather annoying. Especially when it's for stuff that shouldn't even need it.
chebraThat account is 23 years old, what if it was just passed on to you from someone else?
So what if I go through the age verification and then pass my account on to someone else?
Heals 
@chebra then you’re in violation of Steams EULA and they’ll happily terminate your account for you.
Your Account, including any information pertaining to it (e.g.: contact information, billing information, Account history and Subscriptions, etc.), is strictly personal. You may therefore not sell or charge others for the right to use your Account, or otherwise transfer your Account[…]
/cc @SecurityWriter
@heals Sure, but that's the reason THEY are citing for not accepting your 23 year-old account as enough of a proof. I'm saying they haven't removed this loophole by adding age-verification.
@heals @chebra @SecurityWriter "it's personal" "we tell you how you can use it"
That doesn't sound personal at all.
SkaveRat 🐀 
@chebra @SecurityWriter their TOS forbid passing on accounts to someone else (even when you die). Thus it's not possible, because you'd obviously violate their TOS. And nobody would do that
@skaverat As if TOS ever stopped anyone. But my point is that in that case they don't need object against those 23 year-old accounts. So either they are accepting the possibility, or they aren't. If that possibility exists, then it will exist also after the new age verification and they can just ask for re-verification one week later with exactly the same reasoning.
retiolus@SecurityWriter The other day, Amazon—where I’ve had an account for many years and have always used the same identity—asked me to provide a photo of my ID and a facial scan under the pretext of combating fraud. I filed a complaint with the @cnil .
jtb@SecurityWriter You have to be 18 to have a Paypal account too, although I don't remember proving it.
maia // magmaus3@SecurityWriter meanwhile this one has had a card long before turning 18
sodiboo 
@maia aren't you, like, not British?
Steam requiring a credit card is only in the UK. where people under 18 cannot get a credit card by law. they can have a debit card, but Steam demands specifically a credit card for age verification.
Steam requiring a credit card is only in the UK. where people under 18 cannot get a credit card by law. they can have a debit card, but Steam demands specifically a credit card for age verification.
@sodiboo ah
(this one is not british; also didn't know that, sorry)
(this one is not british; also didn't know that, sorry)
luna the doggie 
sarah tonin 
@lunareclipse @sodiboo @maia my guess is it's a language issue
in france for example, the only distinction language wise between debit card and credit card is in your bank, to anything outside, it's just a bank card
4censord 
yuki - queen of the snow@SRAZKVT @lunareclipse @sodiboo @maia yep, i'm french and i've always had a debit card. took me a while to understand in some places it's not a give you'll have a card directly tied to your bank account that directly withdraws money from it
@lunareclipse @maia yeah . lots of actual adults in the UK were/are unable to verify easily on steam due to literally not having a credit card lol. so it's clearly a very flawed way of verifying the age of your customers. but I kinda get why they did it this way - it is one of the least intrusive methods of doing it, given that Steam users already provide payment information. it minimizes the amount of data that they actually collect because Wow It Would Not Be Fun To Have To Present My Passport To Valve If I Was British.
Noel KellyWhat happens if you don't cough up?
You lose access to certain games, or the whole account?
[My credit cards where created in the 90s]
George BI think Newgrounds has a "if your account is more than 10 years old then you are clearly over 18" somewhere in their age verification or at least they did when they first started doing it.
Nick
Renaud Berthier@SIT @SecurityWriter They may have change stance (dunno where the screenshot is from), but it was not their original idea: https://andregarzia.com/2026/03/apple-just-lost-me.html
@rberthier @SecurityWriter Interesting, I saw this on Reddit a few days ago from a UK user and cut the screenshot before saving it.
I also noticed a user explain how (hard it was) to get the driver's license accepted to a user who hadn't managed it, so it might not function as reliably as it should.
@rberthier @SecurityWriter This was from the comments here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1s3cwxz/
Inari 
@SecurityWriter anyone with a debit card in the US or Canada has a “credit card” for all intents and purposes! LOL
Human Brain Enthusiast@SecurityWriter 23 years is impressive, I'm holding at the 21 years mark.
Which they give you fucking BADGE for that's the FIRST THING on your profile.
woe2you@thomasfuchs @SecurityWriter Only 18 for me, but you can change what badge your profile features. Mine has the "Steam Hardware Beta Candidate" to remind me of that time Gaben rug-pulled me.