The EU Digital Services Act requires a lot of changes from businesses with EU customers. If you’re in the video games industry, that very likely includes you. That’s fine, though – I’m sure you’re happy to comply. But what do those changes actually look like in practice? Let’s go through a few examples of how to get video games and the Digital Services Act seeing eye-to-eye.

What is the connection between video games and the Digital Services Act

Let’s start with some background on what the Digital Services Act is trying to do.

In the past, if you went to a trade show and bought a suspiciously well-priced Alpho Romea whose wheels fell off as soon as you got it home, you’d have a few clear options of what to do next. You could find the seller quite or trade show organiser relatively easily. You could get the law involved, and they’d know how to handle it. You could even argue that the trade show itself had at least some responsibility for checking its traders for counterfeits.

Today, your options aren’t as clear. You often can’t find the seller or how to contact them. Your complaint is one of thousands that the law can’t handle fast enough. The platform is too focused on other things to even think about vetting its traders.

The Digital Services Act is trying to fix that. It wants to make navigating the digital environment safe and easy, giving users more clarity over their rights and how to enforce them. It’s also paving the way for enforcement to actually happen, and in a reasonable time.

These issues are common in video games and the Digital Services Act will make a better gaming community for everyone.

Some practical examples: Among Us, Minecraft, Steam, and Itch.io

There are a lot of different scenarios that could play out between video games and the Digital Services Act, and it’s not possible to find one analogy that shows them all. Instead, let’s work through some examples of games or services that we’re all likely to know.

We’ve already spoken about how the Digital Services Act works, but the Wikipedia plot summary is this:

  • The Act imposes certain obligations on businesses providing intermediary services;
  • Intermediary services are defined as any remote, electronic service requested by a user, to provide that user with:
    • a conduit – being the transmission of information;
    • caching – being the transmission and temporary storage of information;
    • hosting – being the storage of information; and
  • Different obligations apply to different types of intermediary service, which include:
    • online platforms – being a hosting service that lets the user disseminate information to the public;
    • online platforms that allow users to conclude distance contracts – being pretty much what the name implies.

And honestly, these intermediary services are pretty much everywhere in the modern video games industry. Any game with multiplayer messaging is a “conduit” service. Any game hosted online is a “caching” service. Any game with user generated content is a “hosting” service. And any distribution platform could be one type of “online platform”, depending on the specifics. The net is wide, and could ask you to make a lot of changes. I’ll sketch out a few of the most important ones, broken up by the most likely service types.

For all intermediaries

All intermediary service providers must:

  • establish a single point of contact for users to reach them, which must be electronic and can’t be wholly automated (Art 12);
  • appoint an EU representative if they aren’t based in the EU themselves, and give this representative enough resources to cooperate with EU authorities (Art 13);
  • describe their moderation policies clearly in their terms, including automated decisions and human reviews, and apply them objectively and proportionally (Art 15).

For example: Among Us includes a conduit service, because it allows players to chat with each other. Innersloth, being a USA entity, would need to appoint a representative in the EU. They would also need to ensure that users understand their moderation policies, and know how to contact them.

For hosting providers

All hosting providers must:

  • give users a clear way of reporting illegal content, with space to substantiate the report, a confirmation of receipt, and a note of whether any subsequent decision was made using automated means (Art 16);
  • give users reasons for their account suspension or restriction, including what the user did wrong, what they can do to fix it, and whether the decision was made using automated means (Art 17).

For example: Minecraft includes a hosting service, because it allows users to store information in the form of their entire constructed world, or even text within that world. Mojang would need to make sure that all users can report on illegal things they see in the game, and that any users who receive complaints against them understand exactly why.

For platforms

All online platforms must:

  • give users a complaints process for them to give substantiated objections to moderation decisions, and ensure that decisions are made by trained staff, not just automated means (Art 20);
  • design interfaces fairly in ways that don’t deceive, manipulate or impair a user’s decision-making (Art 25).

For example: Minecraft also includes a platform service, because it allows users to disseminate their hosted information to the public, via public servers. Mojang would need to make sure that users can object to decisions made against them. They would also need to avoid any dark patterns in their interface design, like making it unreasonably difficult to cancel a subscription.

For platforms that allow distance contracts

All online platforms that allow their users to conclude distance contracts must:

  • vet their traders by getting (and showing users) their contact and business registration information, and details of the legality of their services (Art 30).

For example: Steam and Itch.io are platforms that allow distance contracts, because users contract with publishers selling their games. They would need to make sure that their traders give information to prove their identity and lawfulness, or suspend their ability to trade with users.

Conclusion

The Digital Services Act requires a lot from you, depending on your specific role. Working out exactly what that role is, however, is the tricky part – one entity might fall under multiple roles across their various services. And while there is a lot of frustration with the lack of clarity on how those roles have been defined, this may in fact be a good thing, with the vagueness encouraging industry participation that defines the area more clearly over time.

For now, though, it will be interesting to watch these decisions get made, and see how video games and the Digital Services Act converge.

How we can help you

If you are interested, please complete the form on the right or enquire now. We will contact you to find out more about your requirements and give you a quote.