If you’re under the age of 13, you better get off Steam.
Developer Valve has quietly updated its Steam Subscriber Agreement mandating that users be 13 years old before signing up.
Steam is Valve’s online video game distribution platform. It is a way for publishers and independent developers to sell PC games online via digital download. Last year the company announced that it had more than 125 million active users with an 8.9-million concurrent peak. Steam, unequivocally, has the largest community of PC gamers under its umbrella.
Now it seems Steam is trying to put up a barrier for people who may be too young for the platform. Thanks to internet archives, comparisons can be made comparing the agreement before and after. Before, the agreement stated: “you become a subscriber of Steam (“Subscriber”) by completing the registration of a Steam user account. This Agreement takes effect as soon as you indicate your acceptance of these terms.” Now it has an added clause stating, “you may not become a subscriber if you are under the age of 13. Steam is not intended for children under 13 and Valve will not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13.”
There is speculation why Valve abruptly added the new clause to its Steam Subscriber Agreement. The company could be trying to avoid a regulatory fine. Under the Federal Trade Commission’s Children Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), it “imposes certain requirements on operators of websites or online services directed to children under 13 years of age, and on operators of other websites or online services that have actual knowledge that they are collecting personal information online from a child under 13 years of age.” Recently, several of toy companies were fined for tracking online activity for children under the age of 13 online.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.