Short answer: The European Commission’s proposed EU KIDS Act expressly includes online games and calls for age-verification tools and safer-by-design services. It is not law yet, and the Commission’s public summary does not say that every game must verify every player’s age, require identity documents, or apply the proposal’s social-media age limits to games.
What the proposal would cover—and what it would not establish
The European Commission announced the EU KIDS Act proposal on 17 September 2026. Its summary includes online games among the online services used by minors that the proposal seeks to address, alongside social networks, video-sharing platforms, AI companions and AI chatbots. The Parliament and Council must negotiate the text before it can become law, so any new duties described now are proposed, not binding KIDS Act requirements. European Commission announcement.
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The proposal’s widely reported ages—no social-media access below 13, parent-managed and feature-limited social-media mini-accounts for ages 13–14, and independent social-media accounts from age 15—are framed as rules for social media. They are not a universal minimum age for playing video games, creating a game account, or using online game features. The Commission’s summary does not establish that every game operator must collect identity documents or conduct the same age check.
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The Commission says online services and app stores would need to use age-verification tools while protecting users’ privacy. Because the summary names online games as within scope, game services may be affected if the proposal is adopted. But the public summary does not spell out a single game-specific rule for every title or service, nor does it settle which operator must check which age threshold or feature.
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That distinction matters because “online game” can mean very different things: a game with no account or communication features, a persistent multiplayer service with chat and profiles, or a storefront or app store that distributes games. The Commission’s summary does not resolve how each case would be treated. It is reasonable to read the proposal’s safer-design direction as potentially relevant to game features such as stranger contact, profiles and social interaction, but those examples are interpretation—not a list of game-specific duties stated in the summary.
Would players have to upload an identity document?
Not necessarily. Age verification can be designed to establish whether someone meets a threshold without handing a service a full identity document. The Commission presents its own age-verification solution as allowing a person to prove they are over 18 without sharing other personal information; it says the solution can be adapted to prove other age ranges and is designed to interoperate with future European Digital Identity Wallets. The Commission says the solution became feature-ready on 15 April 2026 and can be customized by Member States and market participants. European Commission: EU age verification.
This is an example of the Commission’s proposed privacy-preserving approach, not evidence that the KIDS Act will require every game to use this particular solution. Nor does it establish that every age-check system is anonymous, secure, or risk-free. The method ultimately used—and what information a game operator, app store or verification provider receives—will depend on the final rules and implementation.
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What privacy protections and safer defaults are proposed?
The Commission describes the KIDS Act as pairing age-assurance tools with safer-by-design defaults. Its examples include limiting features that encourage excessive use, preventing unsolicited contact from strangers, defaulting minors’ profiles to private, and making blocking and muting straightforward. European Commission announcement.
For games, these ideas could be relevant to account profiles, chat, friend requests, matchmaking and other contact features, depending on the final text. They should not be read as a confirmed checklist of obligations for all games. The Commission’s stated privacy direction is to verify an age condition without unnecessarily exposing personal information; how effectively a particular implementation does that cannot be inferred from the policy summary alone.
How this relates to rules already in force
The proposed KIDS Act would sit alongside existing EU protections rather than replace them. The Commission says the Digital Services Act (DSA) already requires platforms accessible to minors to maintain a high level of privacy, safety and security, and bans targeted advertising to minors on online platforms. Those are existing DSA obligations as described by the Commission; any additional KIDS Act duties remain proposals until the legislative process is complete. European Commission: Protecting children online.
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What players, parents and game operators can conclude now
- Players and parents: The proposal does not mean a universal EU gaming age of 13 or 15, and the Commission has not said every player will need to upload an ID.
- Game operators: Online games are expressly included in the Commission’s scope summary, but the summary does not specify final, game-by-game age-check duties or implementation timelines.
- Privacy-conscious users: The Commission describes a proof-of-age model that can avoid sharing other personal information, but that example does not guarantee that every future system or deployment will work the same way.
Until Parliament and Council negotiate the proposal, the soundest reading is that the EU is proposing stronger age assurance and safer defaults across services used by minors—including online games—without yet defining a single universal age rule or verification method for gaming.
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