Epic Games intends to make the Internet and online games safer for children. To do this, the company has opened free access to its Kids Web Services (KWS) service. With its help, parents can confirm their identity and consent to the processing of children’s personal data.Epic Games announced this together with its company SuperAwesome.
She is responsible for the development and development of Kids Web Services.
How does this service work?With the help of KWS, developers can send requests to collect personal data of children in games.
The parent or guardian confirms their identity and consents to the processing of their child’s personal information.
The convenience of this system lies in the fact that parents do not need to constantly undergo verification for each individual game. After the first check, they are entered into a special ParentGraph database. According to SuperAwesome, there are now more than a million verified parents in it.
This way, if a parent has verified their identity in Fortnite, they won’t have to do it again in Among Us or another game connected to KWS.
As Epic Games notes, this approach also minimizes the processing of personal data itself. SuperAwesome collects complete information only once, after which it uses only a minimal set of information from the ParentGraph database.
Why did Epic Games make KWS free?Today, regulators around the world have begun to pay special attention to the safety of children on the Internet.
To do this, special laws are being adopted in different countries and appropriate measures are being introduced.
For example, in the United States, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) came into force back in 2000. According to it, the administrations of websites and other online resources should provide an opportunity for parents and guardians to consent to the collection of personal information of children under 13 years of age.
Similar rules apply to gaming companies, especially to developers of online titles.
According to SuperAwesome, today many studios avoid the introduction of parental verification services. The main problem is their high cost. Large companies can develop their own solution, but small indie studios cannot afford licensing or creating such services.
Because of this, some developers may lose access to an underage audience. That’s why Epic Games and SuperAwesome decided to make their service completely free. The companies note that due to the lack of a financial barrier, any studio will now be able to use it.
Epic Games also believes that the introduction of KWS is necessary for the development of the gaming industry in the direction of metaverses. Since this is a space that unites people of all ages, developers need to take care of creating a safe and comfortable environment.
“The metaverse will consist of many events and phenomena that will not be controlled by any company. To do this, we all need to create a system that will also take into account the safety of the audience,” said Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games.
Previously, the company has repeatedly talked about creating its own metaverse. To do this, she also invested in the Core platform, which has been repeatedly called one of Roblox’s potential competitors.