Here is a link to our support site which provides more information:

https://recroom.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4426900227735-...

Love Rec Room :)

But this is basically the button press the GP was talking about, during sign up (which can be separate from the main sign up on the same device) the kid just says they were born in 1912 and now the mic works. Yes it's compliant with the law but it's the same problem GP was actually talking about - there is no real verification.

Having parental controlled accounts is a nice feature in general though, regardless of the legal requirements. Ultimately things like this come down to making good parenting easier and that can help.

I think the idea is that parents are supposed to create accounts on Epic and Steam, not children. The parent selects the correct age during account creation.

What's stopping the kid from making a new account though? Knowing myself, I did similar things as a child especially since my parents were not very tech literate.

Exactly. It's a well-armoured safe door on a safe with no sides.

100% stopping kids in voice chat isn't the goal. Stopping kids from accidentality joining voice chat is.

So nothing is stopping them from purposefully getting a chat activated account, that's the point.

The law itself disagrees. It's quite explicit that the point is to not allow kids into chat rooms at all without parental consent. It does not mention anything about preventing kids from accidentally joining chat just that they are not the ones able to provide consent to allow chat.

Is your argument that the law specifically has language interpreting its goal?

Can you quote it please, because I find that surprising.

Voice chat without parental approval is less likely to happen if the device is in public space in the residence.

This is true independent of the law.

I've made fake accounts for my kids where I lied about their age, in order to bypass certain restrictions. That's how screwed up our legislation is in this area.

So just set it to off by default for everyone? That seems like a pretty pragmatic and very non-theatrical improvement. Of course it will have to contend with the theatrics of gamers whining about the immense hassle of a one-time settings change to enable voice chat.

How does this prevent children from enabling voice chat?

The FTC's statement specifically says the issue is that it was on by default. Not that it could possibly be turned on by a child.

> The FTC’s $275 million proposed settlement with Epic Games, owner of Fortnite, alleges the company violated the law by collecting personal information from kids under 13 without parental consent and by enabling voice and text chat by default

The law is that <13 can not be voice recorded without parental consent, the way Fortnite broke this was by having it on by default. This does not mean the only way to break this is by having it on by default it's just what Fortnite was doing.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2017/10/...

Right but could it possibly be the case that FTC knows there's no reasonable way to validate ages, and they'd not go after companies for "affirm you're not <13 years of age" so long as they make a reasonable effort to prevent it, or at least not set the default to be in clear violation of the law?

You know, alcohol, weed, and porn companies have managed just fine with user affirmations.

“I am 18+” is a well known joke as well and you can’t get purchased alcohol/weed without ID before it shows up (well, legally).

That the FTC would know there is no reasonable way would be a strong indicator it is indeed not a reasonable law. The default is definitely why Fortnite got fined, and is a reasonable reason to be fined, but it doesn’t make the law somehow effective it just makes Fortnite wrong for intentionally violating the law. I.e. they should have be fined but not because the law protects children effectively rather it’s not up to them to decide if it does on their own.

I don't even know what point you're trying to make now.

Changing the default will certainly reduce the number of kids who are subject to toxic game chat. FTC knows it, I know it, you know it, and Epic knows it.

I hate this word but it's about consent. If an 8 year old enables voice chat they're consenting to the shit that comes out of it. They may not fully understand what they're getting into, but that's a different issue.

perfect is the enemy of good here, the other poster is arguing that because it's not perfect and is easily circumvented that it will have no effect, and, as you said, we all know this isn't true.

"Off by default" is also a great way to make sure your feature is not used by the vast majority of people. It could easily lead to user attrition for new players looking for a social experience as well.

Maybe getting social experiences from places other than fortnite is a good thing?

Ah yes, the ol' "lower user engagement versus non-stop racial slurs piped into the ears of the 13 year olds you just marketed your highly addictive game to" dilemma

For what it's worth, games like Dota 2 already default all communication on new accounts to "off". It's a rite of passage for new players to play some games and realize they haven't heard anyone say anything. Then they find the setting and realize they're being relentlessly flamed for being new.

Once you climb out of the beginner ranks, literally everyone has found the communication settings and has adjusted them to their preferences.

I agree that most of the time, people don't change defaults. But isn't true for team games in my experience.

Ah yes, the classic "privacy/security/compliance hurts our funnel" argument. Said as if the former aren't more important than the latter.

I think a difficulty here is that a lot of responders are imagining that all children are the same precocious 13 year old they were -forgetting the trusting 8 to 10 year olds they also were, and they are doing that thing where the edge cases start to dwarf the primary purpose in their minds.

Yeah apparently on the one hand, setting the default to Off would absolutely clobber Fortnite's engagement metrics and the law is unjust for this. On the other hand, setting the default to Off would not make a dent in children's usage of this product and therefore the law is useless.

Who cares about their engagement metrics? Like, what societal good does it do? I’m not sure the law is unjust because a company’s (non financial) metrics are impacted when the law acts as intended.

For the record, I’m pro games and against pearl clutching game ratings and “for the children” style laws, but I’m also not very sympathetic to big companies profits being a motivation for our lawmakers.

There are multiple ways, but considering they own a company that is supposed to do this as a service, failing to do this for the own biggest game seems a bit weak.

https://www.superawesome.com/

SuperAwesome KWS is another click button "verification" solution. Being interested in selling ads in a COPPA compliant-enough way isn't the same thing as making COPPA verification accurate/more than theatre.

Fortnite was too blatant with it by doing this with all accounts including ones that had entered young ages but that doesn't mean other apps that follow the entered age are accurate it just means they aren't likely to get fined. Which sure - still fine Fortnite. Knowingly breaking a law because you want to doesn't make you exempt from the law even if the law is useless in practice.

I'd personally like if the law could be made into something more meaningfully verifiable I just don't think there is a reasonable way to do so. E.g. the UK has an opt-in requirement at the ISP level for porn access because "I am 18+" buttons weren't actually doing anything but making a legal bypass. Yet it's both a ridiculously bad solution and still easily worked around anyways.

Amazing the contradictory thinking people have about “it’s impossible to know a child’s age” vs. “it’s totally fine and reasonable that Google knows you’re pregnant before you do”.

I'm not a lawyer, but does the law require 100% un-hackable accuracy? Not the law as-written, but as-enforced? Has anyone been successfully penalized because they failed to catch one under-13 year old who said "Yes" to a dialog? Most sites I've seen either ask for your birth year or your age, and trust what the user says. If that's enough to be in compliance, why would any company make it more complicated? It's like if you've ever visited an alcohol company's web site, they ask "Are you 21?" and if you say yes, that's all they care about.