Last week Nexus Mods said it would be moving to tighten up how it handles access to adult content. The major element is an age verification system, yet to be implemented, and it’ll apply to UK and EU users in response to the UK’s Online Safety Act and the EU’s Digital Services.
“The majority of adult content hosted on the site” for these users will require age verification, though when PCG asked for specifics we were told only that Nexus is “confident we can strike a solid balance between user safety and accessibility.” The age verification system will not apply outside of the EU and UK.
This change occurred just weeks after the founder of Nexus Mods, who goes by the handle Dark0ne on the site, departed after 24 years, saying the site had “taken its toll” on his life. The proximity led some users to incorrectly assume that the new age verification system is being imposed by the site’s new owners, drunk on the power of denying gooners access to their smutty Stellar Blade mods.
“For the people who think this is the fault of the new owners of Nexus Mods, please either read the news post above properly or read up on the laws around child safety online that are coming to every major western country either this month, or in the coming year (including most states in the US),” says Dark0ne in a new comment on the announcement post.
“We did not write these laws, we have no control over these laws. Nexus Mods is not an underground website operating on the dark web—it’s a legitimate business that has to follow the laws of the countries it operates in.”
The Nexus founder goes on to say that the site “would have had to have dealt with it this year no matter what. Frankly, I’m relieved that it is not me who has to deal with this or be responsible for the content on the site directly because I have some big misgivings about how it is being enforced. However, if it was me, I would still have followed the letter of the law, and I’d have been doing what is written above. Because I’d have to.
“So yes, you can be worried or angry with the direction the internet is taking and the amount of control governments are enforcing on it around the world, but the law is the law, and Nexus Mods will, and must, follow the law.”
I mean, it’s a fair point. If Nexus Mods didn’t implement some sort of system like this, it would be as Dark0ne puts it “fined out of existence.” And the new owners of Nexus are clear that, while it needs to change stuff about how it serves adult content to users, “we don’t consider removing it a viable option.”
The changes will include things like new tags for adult material, which are:
- Pornographic
- Extreme Violence
- Harmful substances
- Suicide
- Self-harm
- Depression
- Body stigma
- Eating disorders
- Swearing or Profanity
- Sexualised
Nexus is also introducing “automated detection for Child Sexual Abuse Material. Any content of this nature will be immediately removed, and the user responsible will be banned and reported to the National Crime Agency,” a UK law-enforcement body.
Most of these tags make obvious sense, but in the context of videogames “extreme violence” could be a bit of an odd one to police: is the fairly violent Cyberpunk 2077 going to have all of its mods tagged like this? Nexus says of this that “content is judged by what is on the page and what users are being exposed to, rather than the game it’s associated with.”
The UK’s Online Safety Act has faced considerable criticism for violating user privacy and security, while the EU’s Digital Services Act has plenty of its own critics. But they’re the law, and here to stay. Not much Nexus Mods can do about that.
