how would someone send proof of their age?
Well, we don't want a ton of personal, private data, but we
would need to see something with a birthdate on it. If you've had your account shut off for being under age, you'll need to talk to your folks about it anyway, they can contact us to discuss what would be suitable.
but you instantly believed me when I said I'm over 13 while registering?
The registration process is a first defense. So if something happens and the Feds show up, we can say "look, they told us they were over 13..."
But if we find out through other means that you're underage, we HAVE to shut of your account.
what if you found out someone had joined at an age of, say, 10, after they had turned 13
Well, obviously since you're 13 *now* you can stay. Users under the age of 13 *now* have to have their accounts shut off. It's the law. It doesn't mean we
agree with the law, but we still have to follow it...
some people who are obviously underage who spell things wrong and don't put spaces in between sentences and it is just annoying
Wow, I have an aunt who's nearing 50 years of age that writes worse than any underage user I've seen on the site. Poor writing skills have nothing to do with proving age.
My mom used to yell at me for playing games with blood when I was 10
That's part of it too, when Dan and Justin screen games, they have to make sure that it's going to be age-appropriate for our users. We obviously want to keep as many people interested as possible, but we don't want to be showing blood, guts and gore to underage kids.
thousands of free online games for kids
Agreed, but technically, anyone under 18 is still
legally considered a "child". We also presume that parents are responsible enough to pay attention to what their kids are doing on the Internet, and will make sure their kid can play puzzle games but not the shooting/action games which might have blood in it.
We've also discussed a 'rating' system for our games, without having to submit EVERY game we have to the ESRB, where we can voluntarily tag things as "blood" or "animated blood" or "zombies", etc., so parents could maybe restrict which kinds of games are available.
They just can't legally store information about the children. They can be on this site and play games without an account.
Yes, exactly! Thanks for summing that up so nicely. I should have mentioned in my opening post that underage users are welcome to play games at our site
anonymously.
