: Allowing minors to play online browser game What are some possible legal issues with allowing minors to play in a text-based browser game. The issues I know of are laws against tracking minors

@Shanna517

Requiring credit card input would bar a lot of young players who don't want to bother their parents with this sort of thing or even adult players who don't want to give out their CC info to play a game, so a less restrictive alternative is to have a good moderation system in place and making an effort to keep minors safe (having an easily accessible system to report abuses and responding promptly to them).

This paired with a solid (and actively enforced) Terms of Service would demonstrate enough good faith on the part of the site operators to protect you from liability in most cases. You can also look at the most popular major gaming networks (PSN, Xbox Live, etc.) and follow them.

The other alternative, of course, is to simply limit inter-player interaction. If there are no text/voice chat capabilities, and no unvetted custom avatars, then all you really need to worry about are inappropriate usernames.

Since you do want to charge for your service anyway, then you could employ a two-tiered system:


During sign-up & credit card entry, parents can specify that they want the account to be restricted to:

only gameplay interaction, and no chat/messaging with other players
or, do as Nintendo did, and limit inter-player social interactions to real-life-based social networks. I.e. in order to chat/message with another player, they need to be added to your buddy list by entering a player identification code that you've previously exchanged at school, by phone, email, etc. This way, kids are only interacting with players that they know in real life and already communicate with.
only being able to participate in games/chat lobbies watched over by a live moderator
only seeing user-uploaded content that has been viewed & approved by staff

Otherwise, the player can play and communicate with any other online player and have immediate access to user-uploaded content that hasn't been vetted by staff yet.


In a freemium model, you can also let users play without entering a CC in the child-safe play mode.

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@Smith883

The problem you'd run into with an MMO is that of which you couldn't predict. Your games may be rated on the content that is included by you(the developer), but it doesn't necessarily mean that's the only content they will be exposed to. Hence why most games have "Gaming experience may vary during online play".

That being said, there are ways where you could save yourself, from legal issues, in doing this. Perhaps putting up a parental agreements and making them place credit card information into your system (both for a subscription and to prove that they're getting consent from someone who is over the age of 18).

It could be argued though, I mean look at daytime television broadcasting, it's to the point to where I wouldn't want my kids watching it at an early age.

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