Online gaming is part of every child’s and adult’s life. The reason is the real-life games that are difficult to ignore. Underage users becoming addicted to online games and losing money and their precious time. Online gaming addiction and other psychological problems are on the rise. Children are exploited by online gammers and often they lose huge sums of cash in such games. Global regulators are becoming rigid towards the gaming and gambling sites to save the children. Most of the regions in the world now require online gaming and age-restricted content sites to practice more stringent age verification protocols to secure the underage users. An “I’m 18 years old” checkbox is no more effective. Anyone can click this checkbox. Hence the reason most of the online gaming industry is using online age verification solutions to verify the age of their players.
The UK becoming more stringent towards gambling and gaming websites
The UK gambling commission now requires gambling websites to verify the identity credentials of their players before onboarding them. The UK is one of the most efficient states when it comes to laws for consumer protection and underage users.
The online gaming industry and gambling websites need to verify the identity of their users before onboarding them. Some facts that need to be verified before player onboarding is the name, address, age, etc.
So online gaming and gambling websites are required to run identity verification and age verification on their customers in real-time. The online gaming sites originated from outside the UK are also required to verify the identity of their customers from the UK if they want to operate in the UK.
Chinese crackdown on gaming websites
The Chinese government’s recent crackdown on the gaming industry is changing the industry’s landscape. The gaming industry is required to take measures for controlling underage gaming addiction. The gaming industry will be required to run identity verification of their end-users and also to control the time they spend on the games.
Tencent an internet giant in China recently it announced that it’ll restrict the underage online gaming addiction through age verification of the end-users. The new actual name-based registration system will mainly be mandated for new players of its trendy Honour of Kings fantasy multiplayer role-playing battle game.
Following the suit, other companies are also taking measures to control underage addiction.
These measures are taken to control underage gaming addiction, underage monetary loss to pro gamers, and underage psychological damage due to gaming and gambling.
Affect of age verification on compliance on businesses
The online gaming industry is a huge market and has a huge potential for users of all ages. But the problem is the underage users accessing age-restricted goods. Hence the strict age verification laws are imposed on businesses. Regulatory compliance is inevitable for businesses but sudden restriction has some consequences and effects on the businesses.
An online gaming business experienced an increase of 40% in its website traffic after a thorough implementation of age verification laws. This shows that regulatory compliance has a positive impact on the growth of an online gaming platform.
Regulatory compliance helps online gaming businesses in attaining retainable growth and profits from legitimate users.
Next-generation compliance solutions
Not only the regulations but the compliance practices are evolving around the globe. Online gaming businesses are using online age verification solutions to verify the age of their gamers before onboarding them. Such solutions can verify the age and identity of a person within seconds through real-time ID-card screening of the person. The end-user is recommended to show his ID card with his face in real-time. The AI-based solution verifies the age against the set age bracket and also matches the face with the face of the end-user with the face image on the ID card.
Such solutions are helpful for all types of age-restricted platforms as they deliver fast results within 30-60 seconds. So no fear of losing legitimate customers due to long verification processes.
