Lobby Help and Moderation - COPPA

[Stan`]

22 minutes ago, Sevda said:

Not entirely sure why. I think this game is perfectly appropriate for anyone; young children can play the Pony Ascendant mod and no blood mod.

COPPA. Same reason Facebook is forbidden for 13 years old without parental consent. Game without the lobby could be lower.

23 minutes ago, Sevda said:

If Stan or User1 is willing to create another thread just to accomodate for reporting then that would be great as well. 

I'd like to hear from user1 as he is still calling the shots.

[Norse_Harold]

19 minutes ago, Sevda said:

2 hours ago, Norse_Harold said:

Thirteen is the minimum age according to the Terms of Use

Not entirely sure why. I think this game is perfectly appropriate for anyone; young children can play the Pony Ascendant mod and no blood mod.

I agree that the single-player game is appropriate for young children. The lobby and lobby-hosted multiplayer games are not, though. Read about the US law COPPA about collection of information on users under 13.

Also, "online interactions" can have significant impacts on psychology of young users, due to cyberbullying, frequent use of profanity, impressionable young minds following bad examples. Young users sometimes don't know that they are friends with and/or mimicing psychopathic behavior until a significant amount of time has passed.

[Yekaterina]

11 minutes ago, Norse_Harold said:

Read about the US law COPPA about collection of information on users under 13.

But not everyone is in the US and we can just age restrict the lobby meanwhile let USA's children beat up the AI. 

[alre]

1 minute ago, Sevda said:

But not everyone is in the US and we can just age restrict the lobby meanwhile let USA's children beat up the AI. 

this thread is about lobby moderation.

[Stan`]

Split.

[Norse_Harold]

18 minutes ago, Sevda said:

31 minutes ago, Norse_Harold said:

Read about the US law COPPA about collection of information on users under 13.

But not everyone is in the US and we can just age restrict the lobby meanwhile let USA's children beat up the AI. 

Although the lobby server is located in Germany, the jurisdiction of the enforcement of the lobby's legal terms is probably the US. This seems like an opportunity to improve the legal terms further, by adding a Governing Law clause.

Anyway, I think that one or more admins of the lobby is located in the US, therefore US law is applicable to the conduct of those admins. Therefore, they can't legally collect data on persons under 13 without parental consent. Therefore, the Privacy Policy, Terms of Service and Terms of Use restrict lobby users to 13 or older.

Anyway, Germany probably has a similar law to COPPA.

[Gurken Khan]

1 hour ago, Sevda said:

I think this game is perfectly appropriate for anyone; young children can play the Pony Ascendant mod and no blood mod.

  As these aren't the standard settings, I don't think we can claim that standard; it would require massive insight into the game to figure out that setting.

In addition to COPPA, I feel war/genocide are serious topics so a "PG 13" rating doesn't seem exaggerated to me.

[smiley]

1 hour ago, Norse_Harold said:

the jurisdiction of the enforcement of the lobby's legal terms is probably the US

The jurisdiction is probably anywhere we facilitate providing the service. Unless we block IP addresses from the US, we are probably bound to COPPA. Same goes for GDPR. If we can't uphold the requirements, regardless of where the service is provided from, providing the service in EU means we are probably liable.

1 hour ago, Norse_Harold said:

This seems like an opportunity to improve the legal terms further, by adding a Governing Law clause.

Governing law clauses would probably be entirely superseded or nullified by the jurisdiction under which the trial is taking place. An EU court would probably take issue if we don't adequately handle personal data regardless if we say our terms are based on American law that has no such framework.

Notice the use of the word "probably". I am not a lawyer.

[Norse_Harold]

Good points, smiley. I agree. I think that jurisdiction, governing law of a contract, and which local laws were infringed are actually 3 separate, but potentially mutually affecting issues.

Anyway, the pros advise adding a Governing Law clause to legal terms for online services. Who in the Wildfiregames team decides on that?

[Stan`]

4 minutes ago, Norse_Harold said:

Anyway, the pros advise adding a Governing Law clause to legal terms for online services. Who in the Wildfiregames team decides on that?

Well SPI, @Jeru or no one at all, since we're not a company, SPI only handle or funds but they can hold copyrights like logos or patents (they currently do not)

[smiley]

1 hour ago, Norse_Harold said:

the pros advise adding a Governing Law clause to legal terms for online services

I guess for countries with strong ties to the jurisdiction under which the company is based in this is actually relevant as the other jurisdiction would be cooperative, (extradition and such).

However, given that we are not a legal entity in the US or anywhere else for that matter, we don't really have that much legal rights anywhere in the world. For any legal matter, someone from this community (probably the person responsible for hosting the service) has to represent as an individual. This is all how I interpreted this stuff, but based on that, its actually better to keep the status quo. At least until an actual lawyer can advise on the legal ramifications.

As for the large companies, well they have in-house counsels who are more than happy to shred through any and all red tape.

I have absolutely no idea what I am talking about though.