The Online Safety Act introduces significant obligations for game publishers, particularly those distributing games with online or interactive features.

Understanding these requirements is crucial to avoid penalties, protect players, and ensure compliance.

What is the UK Online Safety Act

The Online Safety Act is a UK law that regulates the distribution of online content. The Act applies to platforms that host user-generated content or enable player interactions, such as chat, forums, and multiplayer matchmaking. Game publishers must ensure that these features comply with new rules to protect users, particularly children, from illegal and harmful content. The Act will apply to you even if your main customer base isn’t in the UK.

Key compliance points for game publishers

The Online Safety Act introduces several new requirements, including requiring publishers to:

  • conduct risk assessments;
  • introduce age-appropriate features for children;
  • implement effective content moderation tools;
  • create transparency reports; and
  • ensure sufficient oversight over third-party developers.

Risk Assessments

Risk assessments aren’t new requirements. These tend to be part and parcel of a business normal operations whether it’s from a data protection or an infosec perspective.

Publishers need to asses risks associated with harmful content. The assessment needs to include how user-generated content or interactions in a particular game might expose players to risk.

Age-appropriate features

We are seeing a growing trend towards law makers requiring age-verification systems in their services. Publishers need to ensure that there are strong age verification systems to ensure that children do not access inappropriate content.

Content moderation

The Online Safety Act requires publishers to implement content moderation tools that allows users to easily flag harmful content.

Transparency obligations

Transparency reports are mandatory. Publishers must publicly document how they address harmful content, outlining moderation efforts, complaint handling, and resolution times.

Third-party oversight

If  you’re working with third-party developers, publishers must ensure that their developers also comply. This includes integrating moderation tools and implementing safeguards throughout the development process.

Challenges game publishers will face with the Online Safety Act

Compliance costs

Compliance tends to be an expensive exercise. We have seen this unfold with data protection laws. Implementing tools for content moderation and reporting systems requires a lot of resources. Many smaller publishers might fall foul of this due to budget constraints.

Legal interpretation issues

Like with most content regulation laws, what you might consider harmful content is subjective. Ofcom, the body responsible for enforcement of the Online Safety Act, will prescribe guidelines as to what it considers harmful content and publishers need to align with it.

Why do game publishers need to comply?

Publishers could face large fines and significant reputational harm for non-compliance.

Actions you can take next

We can help you:

  • determine how the Online Safety Act applies to you by asking us to draft an opinion;
  • manage your risks with third-party developers by asking us to draft your contracts;
  • navigate complex legal issues by consulting with a specialist.